






.^ .Wa. \/ ,Jfe\ \^^ ..^<; \^, 







" ''^^.J' * 



(P- "^ 'TXT. A <- -o.. - .u 




.> , t • n *>v ^» • • • . "^V A > - » - '^ 



.^ .: 











M*^ t* >»^'*- 4* 



,V 














>0r c 









.0^ 






As Others See Her 



AS 
OTHERS SEE HER 

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S 

IMPRESSIONS OF THE AMERICAN 

WOMAN IN WAR TIME 

By A. BURNETT-SMITH 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

m^z Biuer^ibe ptejj^ Cambridge 

1919 






COPYRIGHT, I9I9, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



/.X^' 



\'^ 



iCI.A5 36 1.71 



TO 

HERBERT C. HOOVER 

UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATOR 

AND WORLD-WIDE HUMANITARIAN 

A TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE AND APPRECIATION 

FROM A HUMBLE FELLOW-WORKER 

IN THE GREAT CAUSE 



A Foreword 

IN the course of a fairly long life I have visited 
many countries other than my own, but have 
never been tempted to write a book about any. 
Further, I have on occasion fallen foul of the cas- 
ual globe-trotters who have the effrontery to pub- 
lish their impressions of a country through which 
they rush at lightning speed, gleaning their super- 
ficial knowledge at tables d'hote and in railroad 
trains. 

I therefore undertook the setting-down of my 
impressions of America with great reluctance, and 
no sense of equipment for the task. 

This record, touched by the tenderness of real 
affection, and informed by gratitude which can 
never be fully acknowledged, will, I trust, be re- 
ceived by those who may read it in the spirit in 
which it is offered. 

A quiet observer, who during a period of seven 
months was afforded unique facilities for getting 
to know the American people, may have picked 
up some unconsidered trifles which at least may 
provoke reflection. These observations were neces- 



viii A Foreword 



sarily confined to the sections of American life to 
which I had access in the course of my public 
work. 

No time was afforded for private excursions, 
investigations, or adventures. I regret that al- 
though I received many invitations to visit 
universities and colleges, the only opportunities 
available were two fleeting visits to Princeton and 
Harvard, and a morning spent with the delightful 
Dean of Barnard College at Columbia. I shall 
always feel that I must return to America to make 
some study of her college life, especially as it 
affects women. 

It only remains for me to say that naught has 
been set down in malice in these few pages, and to 
assure my critics that I have brought to my task 
the single-mindedness and complete sincerity with 
which I have essayed most of the affairs of my 
public and private life. 

A. BURNETT-SMITH 



the North House 
Hertford, England 



As Others See Her 



As Others See Her 
I 

ONE summer in the early nineties, the 
abode of John the Baptist in Oberam- 
mergau was transformed into a rooming- 
house of the most primitive description, for 
the reception of guests who had travelled 
across continents and seas to witness the 
Passion Play. 

The audience was so largely American, 
that possibly some who read these lines may 
be able to recall from personal memory how 
totally inadequate the little village of the 
Austrian Tyrol was to meet the demands 
made upon its accommodations. The few 
modest hostelries, and all the chalets and 
cottages of the villagers, were crammed to 
suffocation, and many were daily turned 
away. The beauty of that wonderful present- 



As Others See Her 



ment of ancient and divine history seemed 
to me somehow marred by the sordid trap- 
pings with which the scene was invested. 

The seething mass of humanity, fighting 
for food and drink and accommodation, dis- 
playing in their eagerness most of the less 
agreeable traits of mankind, almost made 
one secretly ashamed of having come to take 
part in such a strange orgy. Often one was 
irresistibly reminded of the scene in the 
temple from which the Master scourged the 
money-changers. Money-changers there were 
in plenty in Oberammergau ; the sordid drama 
of buying and selling went on unceasingly. 

One could not help considering, too, what 
its ultimate effect might be on these once 
simple mountaineers, and whether it was 
humanly possible that they could retain 
their simplicity of character, as their ex- 
ploiters stoutly maintained that they would. 

Climbing the narrow stairway to my ap- 
pointed eyrie in the house of John the Baptist 
on a very sultry August afternoon, I ob- 



As Others See Her 



tained through an open door a gHmpse of a 
rather intimate interior. 

The chamber was very small and very- 
bare, being practically devoid of anything 
approaching comfort. The floor space was 
crowded by two truckle beds, a toilet stand 
on which stood a microscopic wash bowl, 
above which hung a queer little looking-glass. 
A couple of rush-bottomed chairs completed 
the furnishings. The low casement window 
was wide open, and a current of quite deli- 
cious air washed clean by twenty-four hours' 
heavy rain, passed through the reviving sun- 
shine to the door. 

Across the intervening space a clothes-line 
improvised out of a piece of stout box cord, 
fastened to the knob on the back of the door 
and to a curtain hook above the window, 
displayed sundry intimate feminine garments 
not usually presented to the public gaze. 

Possibly my expression was a little startled, 
for there was a certain naivete in the wel- 
coming smile of the charming young woman 



As Others See Her 



curled up at the foot of one of the beds, 
darning a stocking, which she had obviously 
removed from the bare foot peeping out 
under a skimpy tweed skirt. 

"Oh, do come right in! I'm just feeling 
real lonesome. Hattie's gone back to the 
afternoon performance. Why aren't you 
there? I heard you say you'd got tickets." 

I stepped in, nothing loath, for already I 
had felt drawn towards that bright young 
specimen of American womanhood, who with 
her sister was making a rapid joy-ride across 
Europe. 

"I hope you aren't shocked at my family 
wash. They've got to be dried and packed in 
the grips to-night, for we're going in the first 
carriage after dinner." 

"I'm sorry," I said with perfect sincerity. 

"So am I — for some reasons, and Hattie 
she's plum crazy to stop. John the Baptist, 
however, having let our sumptuous apart- 
ment to a member of the British aristocracy 
we've got to quit. But you have n't told me 



As Others See Her 5 

yet why youVe let your husband go by him- 
self to the play. Didn't you Hke it?" 

I explained that I liked parts of it, but 
that we had had a very draughty seat on the 
previous evening, and that I had thought I 
would enjoy a walk on the outskirts of the 
village. 

She nodded, as she bit off her darning-wool 
close to the heel of her stocking. 

"I know — that's just how it affects me. 
I want to get away from it, not to it. I'd 
liefer listen to Deacon Ira Morris lecture on 
the Apocalypse' in Elmira — that's my home 
town. Do you really think now that all 
the saints who from their labours rest up 
there — " She pointed with a slender brown 
finger towards the heavenly blue of the 
sky — "Do you think that they can like to 
see themselves rigged up like that, singing 
themselves to death to make a tourists' holi- 
day?" 

I smiled and shook my head. 

"While the dollars are piling up," she con- 



As Others See Her 



tinued viciously. "Not for John and the rest 
of the dear lovely people, but for some horrid 
Jewish syndicate in Munich. It gets me the 
wrong way, that's all." 

It had got me just that way too, and was 
the real reason why I had allowed my spouse 
to go alone to the performance. 

He had had some talk the previous evening 
with this vivid and interesting conscientious 
objector. Meeting us at table d'hote in the 
queer little living-room downstairs, she had 
suddenly transfixed him with a rather em- 
barrassing question which arrested the whole 
table. 

"Say, you don't happen to be the Duke, 
do you? They say there's one in the house 
and I'm crazy to see a real duke." 

The twinkle in his eye indicated that only 
the fear lest the real duke might happen to 
be present (for these things did happen in 
Oberammergau in the early nineties) de- 
terred him from owning to the soft impeach- 
ment. 



As Others See Her 



"My wash is all right, isn't It? If only they 
knew a thing about running water here — " 
she said with a little sigh as she vigorously 
shook one of the flapping garments. "Say, 
where do you go from here? Lindau and all 
these other wonderful Bavarian castles are 
next on our schedule. My, what a lot of them 
there are! Fancy spending your life building 
a new castle for every day in the week and 
trying to live in them. Could n't be done in 
a democratic country. Could n't we go to- 
gether? It would be lovely and cost less for 
carriages. What a time poor Hattie has count- 
ing the dollars! She's the finance partner. 
Even with Cook's coupons it costs a lot 
more than we figured out at Elmira and we 
aren't half through with our schedule yet." 

At my suggestion she produced the sched- 
ule, a remarkable document bearing the 
names of fifty-three towns and cities to be 
visited in England and Scotland and a con- 
siderable section of the continent of Europe. 
In addition there were scores of other objects 



8 As Others See Her 

of interest in each place marked with red 
ink. The only comment I could think suit- 
able was that it was a very large schedule, 
and somewhat inconveniently crowded into 
the space of seven weeks. 

She dismissed that objection airily, espe- 
cially the suggestion of possible fatigue. 

"We simply have n't time to be tired, but 
we never are tired. We aren't built that way. 
If we'd got the dollars we might travel in 
leisurely state, perhaps. We've got seven 
weeks' vacation and fifty dollars between us, 
after we've paid for the coupons, hotel, and 
travel; that's our little lot. We'll arrive back 
in Elmira without a nickel and with very 
few souvenirs. That's worrying me a good 
deal, there are so many folks back home we'd 
like to take something to. Every blessed 
child in my school I'd like to remember, but 
it simply can't be done." 

I asked whether she thought they could 
take it all in, and arrive home without con- 
fusion of ideals. 



As Others See Her 



"Oh, yes, that sort of thing don't worry 
us at all. We'll sort it all out on the boat with 
the help of good old B." She leaned over to 
pat affectionately the fat, familiar red form 
of a second-hand Baedeker she had picked 
up in a bookstore in Albany for fifty cents. 

There were many Sadies and Hatties in 
Oberammergau that summer. Before the war 
one met them in every travel haunt in 
Europe. Invincible little grey travellers, 
wearing shabby clothes and creased veils 
over depressed hats, carrying shabby micro- 
scopic grips, doing their own washing in 
hotel bedrooms, knowing neither weariness 
nor boredom, but enjoying every moment of 
their trip. Their one resolve was to miss 
nothing, their universal goal the accomplish- 
ment of their full schedule. 

Will they come to us again, I wonder, 
when the nightmare of the four years' 
struggle has lifted from blood-stained Eu- 
rope? If not, something pathetic and very 
gallant will have gone out of life. 



lo As Others See Her 

One evening a little earlier in that very- 
summer at the close of a crowded London 
season, I had happened to be a unit in 
a crowd pressing up the wide staircase 
of a great house where the American bride 
of a British peer was holding her first 
reception. 

Her serene and exquisite figure was finely- 
poised against the background of glowing 
hothouse blooms which showed up the pearly 
whiteness of her satin gown, and the won- 
derful clear pallor of her cameo-like face. 
Her small head crowned with diamonds 
was very regally held. Ropes of pearls hung 
from her stately neck, and her smile never 
wavered. 

She managed to infuse into each new greet- 
^ing something individual and personal, so 
that the least distinguished guest was en- 
folded in a special welcome. In her was 
vested something of the same gallant, tireless 
spirit that glowed in the little schoolmarm 
from New York State. The spirit of the 



As Others See Her ii 

new democracy come to invest the tired Old 
World with the new wine of youth! 

Yet between these two types there must be 
in the New World a great army of quite 
ordinary women of the home-keeping type, 
the women who make the backbone of a 
nation's life. It is of some few of those I 
would write my impressions with a courage 
that would be wholly admirable, if it had 
any assurance of success. 



II 

A DISTINGUISHED Scotchman of my 
acquaintance, when he takes a holiday, 
goes down to the railway station, and, with- 
out enquiring its destination, boards the first 
train that happens to draw up at the plat- 
form. 

How he manages to elude the booking- 
clerk and the ticket-collector, or at what 
moment and by what impulse he decides to 
leave the train, or what are his subsequent 
adventures, I have never been able to 
discover. No first-hand information has 
ever been forthcoming. His journeying 
secrets, whatever they are, are most carefully 
guarded. 

But he maintains the complete success of 
his scheme, and frequently repeats the ex- 
periment, asserting that the weighty para- 
phernalia surrounding a journey taken in 
the usual way — plans, schedules, and valu- 
able information relating to possible destina- 



As Others See Her 13 

tions and objectives — instantly rob it of its 
only possible charm, that of unexpectedness. 
He holds that all elements of travel, save 
that, are the abomination of desolation, to 
be avoided as such. 

Though charming, he is, as may be sup- 
posed, a somewhat eccentric creature. Once 
a deputation of thoughtful citizens waited 
on him to ascertain his views on the opening 
of museums on Sundays. He somewhat per- 
plexed them by replying with more heat 
than such an inoffensive question seemed to 
warrant: — 

"I know of no reason why museums should 
ever be opened! If they were to remain per- 
manently closed, a large number of in- 
offensive persons would be spared ineffable 
boredom, and there would be fewer deaths 
from draughts." 

I must confess to sympathy with his at- 
titude towards both subjects. As regards 
holiday-making, I have never been able to 
make a business of seeing the world. Care- 



14 As Others See Her 

fully selected travel routes, elaborately pre- 
pared schedules, the system of tickets in a 
wallet which you cart round until you have 
torn the last leaf from it, are as little accept- 
able to my temperament as they were to that 
of R. L. S. Far rather would I journey with 
him alongside the deliberate and thoughtful 
Modestine, or commit my way to a crawling 
barge on some river that may lead to no- 
where. 

Most of my journeyings through life have 
been taken in a spirit of adventure. Is not 
life itself the greatest adventure of all? 
The thing is to be ready for whatever comes, 
bringing a cheerful courage to all. I may, in 
the course of certain erratic wanderings, have 
missed most of the objects, for the achieve- 
ment of which, from time Immemorial, a 
large number of persons have been willing to 
sacrifice the comforts of home. 

The only possible advantage the persistent 
and accurate travel-monger can have over 
the casual is the right to correct others, and 



As Others See Her 15 

to provide them with valuable but generally 
unacceptable information. Thank Heaven, 
I have never thirsted to inform my fellow 
beings about anything. Sometimes the task 
has been forced upon me, but in the main I 
have been far too busy informing myself in 
a world where one never comes to the end of 
signs and wonders. 

Thus it happens that though a consider-' 
ably travelled person as regards mere mileage, 
I am singularly, perhaps lamentably, ig- 
norant concerning most of the landmarks 
which the travelling public rush forth in 
hordes to see. This disposition undoubtedly 
gives one a delicious sense of freshness. At 
every port, no matter how often revisited, 
one is tempted to say, and in a sense it 
would be true: — 

"I have never been here before, but only 
dreamed it! This is the first, the only time!" 

The voyage to America, rendered familiar 
to me through many crossings, proved to 



1 6 As Others See Her 

be an entirely different experience in war 
time. 

The name of the steamer was withheld 
from us; no crowded boat train ghded out of 
Euston amid the farewells and good wishes 
of friends and relatives. 

The handful of passengers, like aliens or 
suspects, were stowed into reserve compart- 
ments, dumped down at an unknown angle 
in Liverpool Docks, pushed into strange 
vehicles much resembling Black Marias, and 
driven through the murk to another part of 
the docks, where a huge monster in fearsome 
war paint waited to receive us. Such a pitiful 
few we were, to be presently swallowed up 
in the dim recesses of an ocean leviathan, 
used to carrying passengers and freight to 
her utmost capacity! One experienced an odd 
sense of loneliness creeping in and out of the 
vast, empty saloons, and in taking constitu- 
tionals on the long decks without meeting a 
soul. 

Only sixty we were, all told, but of excel- 



As Others See Her 17 

lent quality! Seldom have I enjoyed a voyage 
more, nor more truly grudged the passing of 
the days. Yet through many of them we 
lived as it were cheek-by-jowl with death; 
in the war zone, his grisly visage seemed to 
sit with us at meat. It was at a time when 
the sea pirates were particularly aggressive, 
taking each day hideous toll of precious lives 
and ships. Our courage was hardly bolstered 
by the sinister precautions taken, and the 
instructions given us how to act in the event 
of the dread emergency arising. 

Fear affects people differently, making 
some noisy and blatant, and engendering in 
others a perhaps ominous quiet. I felt rather 
proud of the fact communicated to me by one 
of the ocean-going captains who had been 
torpedoed three times. He said that women 
passengers never gave the smallest trouble, 
but comported themselves in peril, and even 
at the supreme moment, with unfailing dig- 
nity and quiet, never complicating nor add- 
ing to the anxieties and responsibilities of 



1 8 As Others See Her 

those in charge. He did not pay his own sex 
the same high tribute, but it takes all sorts 
to make a world. 

We talked not at all about our danger, 
except for the exchange of a little badinage 
as we went through the solemn ceremony of 
the daily boat drill. One of the lessons we 
have learned in the past four years is to face 
the last enemy at least with a complete sem- 
blance of courage. Nevertheless, there was a 
distinct uprise in temperature when we awoke 
one morning to find that the boats had been 
swung in again and the guns covered up, 
mute assurance that we were out of the 
immediate danger zone. 

The lover of adventure would surely find 
satisfaction, if not a cure for his passion, 
in such a voyage, but it had its compensa- 
tions. The atmosphere, if a little serious, was 
fine, and we had our delicious lighter mo- 
ments, and a full modicum of the laughter 
that doeth good like a medicine. 

Among the passengers was Major Grayson 



As Others See Her 19 

Murphy, the head of the American Red 
Cross in Europe, returning, on the conclusion 
of his organizing work, to his military duties. 
I mention his name because from his lips I 
received what proved to be a valuable and 
infallible key to the mentality of America. 

Speaking of the work I was about to 
undertake he said: — 

"I want you to remember that we are not 
the kind of people you in Europe think we 
are, just pilers-up of dollars, and nothing else. 
At heart we are idealists, and any appeal 
you may make from that platform will not 
fail." 

How often had I occasion to bless these 
wise words during the next few months and 
how immeasurably they helped me, will never 
be told. 

It seems necessary to mention here that I 
was travelling under the auspices of the 
British Government, to help explain to the 
American people the urgent need for closer 
food conservation on their part, in order that 



20 As Others See Her 

their allies might be enabled to carry on the 
fight. 

I have always loved New York, and have 
observed her approach in many moods. But 
never have I seen her wear so forbidding an 
air as on that most dismal Sunday morning 
when we crept up the river through the ice- 
floes in a temperature of ten below zero. We 
were unable to make the landing-stage until 
the ice-breakers, whose coming was long 
delayed, had made a passage for us, by which 
time the few faithful souls who had braved 
the morning rigours to welcome some of us 
had melted away, leaving only the desola- 
tion embodied in the dreary halls dedicated 
to customs. 

How thankful we were to get away at last, 
and to be enfolded by the warmth and 
comfort of the Plaza Hotel ! 

Is there not something dreary and unin- 
viting about such vast caravansaries, which 
have the same distinguishing features in 



As Others See Her 



21 



every part of the world? In some they are 
accentuated; that is all. They do not con- 
spicuously invite the traveller, but rather 
suffer and hustle him. He becomes a mere 
number corresponding to his key, which 
hangs upon a peg. 

I shall never cease to marvel at the 
courage of those who elect of their own free 
will to make homes in such places, though I 
am bound to admit that they seem in no 
way discouraged by the experience, but 
rather the reverse. Possibly their immunity 
from the domestic worries which harry 
simpler folk gives them this cheerful serenity. 

I found the Plaza beautiful, comforting, 
and entertaining during the few days I spent 
under its roof. It afforded me, during some 
leisure days which were destined never to be 
repeated, an opportunity of making certain 
observations, from the outside, of an interest- 
ing phase of New York life. 

I used to sit in the foyer, watching the re- 
volving doors which revolved all day without 



22 As Others See Her 

ceasing, for the ingress and egress of hundreds 
of persons who seemed to have no other 
business in life except to compass revolving 
doors. War! No such dark visage would 
dare encroach on this beautiful, leisured, 
flower-filled atmosphere! Perish the thought! 
I could not imagine myself so much as 
murmuring the word "economy" in the ears 
of these smiling, occupied people, or trying 
to remind them by word or look of the inti- 
mate horror of war from which I had come. 
Still less could I imagine them scuttling like 
rabbits to their holes when the dull boom of 
the warning gun proclaimed the approach 
of the pirates of the air. War made a back- 
ground for certain naive conditions to the 
toilet, perhaps; that was all. 

The most persistent was the war work-bag, 
an immense creation of satin or brocade or 
the homelier cretonne, worn over the arm as 
a sort of insignia. It contained knitting, I 
supposed, and the great point was that it 
should be big enough. When it looked as if 



As Others See Her 23 

its frail and dainty bearer could make an am- 
bush of it and escape boredom or threat by- 
creeping inside, it then seemed to give a 
singular serenity and complacence to the ex- 
pression. 

Watching the endless procession through 
the foyer, to the restaurants, the tea- and 
dance-rooms, I obtained a picture of the 
youth, beauty, and fashion of New York 
which can never fade from my memory. 

American womanhood has an exquisite, 
alluring charm, distinctly more French than 
Anglo-Saxon. Coming from a country where 
half the women were in uniform, and the 
other half wearing simple and sad-coloured 
clothes, I was perhaps more impressed than 
I should have been at another time by the 
beauty and richness of their attire. The 
warmth of the indoor temperature permitted 
the wearing of the thinnest, most diaphanous 
materials, and when furs, rich and luxurious 
beyond the dreams of avarice, were thrown 
aside, the picture presented was calculated 



24 As Others See Her 

to arrest, sometimes to startle. After some 
observation, I arrived at the conclusion that 
such was its intention, and I carried away, 
especially from the dance-room, the impres- 
sion that nowhere in the world is the lure of 
sex more provocative. 

It worried me, an old-fashioned person, to 
see so many lovely and piquant faces so un- 
necessarily made up. 

There appeared to be only one standard 
for clothes, the youthful standard. 

Grandmamma, disporting herself in abbre- 
viated skirts and high-legged-coloured foot- 
wear, plus the inevitable make-up, did not 
always appear to me an edifying spectacle. 

Still I am obliged to record my impression 
that, having visited most of the capitals in 
Europe, I saw more beautiful women, and 
in a shorter space of time, in New York than 
I had seen anywhere else. 

On Fifth Avenue on a fine afternoon these 
enchanting creatures seemed worthy of the 
noble thoroughfare they adorned. 



Ill 

IF I were an American I should be prouder 
of New York than of anything else in 
the country, excepting the beauty of its 
women. I would not have missed these quiet 
days before I began to work to an inexorable 
schedule, they afforded so fine an opportu- 
nity for some intimate, unbiased study of the 
city. 

I prowled about the streets on foot, 
walking many miles, lingering wherever 
fancy tempted me, slipping into second or 
third rate restaurants where you see and 
hear queer and some enlightening things. 

In this way I obtained a good many side- 
lights on the mentality of a people but re- 
cently enrolled in the ranks of those fighting 
to save civilization. There was a method in 
my madness, since it was above all things 
necessary that before beginning to speak I 
should know something about the public I 



26 As Others See Her 

presumed to address, or, to put it more cor- 
rectly, of the great forces behind that public. 
Those with whom I came in daily contact at 
that time, and with some of whom I held 
intimate converse, do not go to the kind of 
meetings arranged by accredited authorities 
and advertised in the newspapers by Pub- 
licity Bureaus. They sometimes meet in 
holes and corners, however, and if you have 
the luck to discover the rendezvous and 
slip in unobserved, you learn a mighty lot. 

A Boston friend to whom I recounted later 
some of my experiences asked in rather an 
awestricken voice: — 

"Were you not afraid of being arrested as 
a German spy?" 

I replied that that contingency had not 
occurred, but that I knew I had met and 
talked with a good many of that engaging 
breed. 

The beaten tracks are easy to tread, and 
offer very little in the way of adventure or 
of enlightenment, whereas in the byways 



As Others See Her 27 

one may come up without effort with the very 
bit of information most ardently desired. 

I had been frequently assured that the 
great majority of naturalized Germans in 
America are absolutely loyal to the land of 
their adoption, but in New York City I be- 
gan to have my doubts. 

One day in the cafe of a big downtown de- 
partment store, I chanced to seat myself at 
a small table, beside a large, stolid-faced 
woman dressed in a tight-fitting coat of 
dyed rabbit-skin. She was accompanied by 
a girl of fourteen or thereabouts, giving 
promise of the same ample dimensions, and 
wearing a plaid frock, and two plaits of fair 
hair hanging down her back. The quarters 
were very close, and the service the slowest 
on earth. 

To beguile the time I ventured on a 
remark. I did not find in America, as I ex- 
pected to find, a universal desire on the part 
of the people to converse with the stranger 
on the smallest provocation, or on none at 



28 As Others See Her 

all. I believe it to be one of the numerous 
libels on the American people. 

On long-distance journeys I have some- 
times been subjected to considerable cross- 
examination, but then, I am good at asking 
questions myself. It is the only known way 
of obtaining information, and the most 
direct. 

Moreover, anything is preferable to the 
frigid atmosphere which can be created, and, 
alas, maintained in a first-class compartment 
in an English train. The most awful thing 
about that atmosphere is its lasting quality. 
I have frequently felt the desire to scream, 
or to do something outlandish to break it up. 

The poor service in the store provided a 
handy peg on which to hang a few remarks, 
and my vis-d-vis revealed her nationality 
by the accent in which she replied. After a 
time I ventured to ask her how she thought 
the war was going. The news from the 
fighting fronts was bad just then, and my 
cruel anxiety slept not, night or day. Also I 



As Others See Her 29 

was feeling too far from the heart of things, 
and suffering from lack of access to reliable 
information. 

She looked at me rather narrowly and gave 
her massive shoulders a little shrug. "Vat 
are you.^" she asked. "Ver do you come 
from?" 

"Scotland," I answered calmly and with 
perhaps a conscious pride. "A little country 
that has done her bit in this war." 

"Ach, Schottland is not so bad," she 
assented. "They fight well, your Schottish 
soldiers. I haf heard my Adolf say that, and 
he knows." 

"Your son is over there, then, helping to 
win freedom's cause?" 

Her eyelids shut down with a curious 
flicker. 

"Yes, he is over there, fighting, no, not 
for freedom, but for life. It is vat it has come 
to, and the strongest is going to vin." 

Now this very ambiguous answer seemed 
capable of but one interpretation. Adolf 



30 As Others See Her 

was fighting on the wrong side. I deployed a 
bit to try and find out. 

"I much admire what I have seen of the 
American army. Yesterday I watched a 
battalion swinging down Fifth Avenue and 
they were the most beautiful things I have 
ever seen, so clean and strong and fine. It 
raised my spirits to look at them and to re- 
flect that they were just the outposts of the 
greatest army in the world." 

Another shoulder shrug, and an impres- 
sive command to pigtails, who was staring 
hard at me, to get on with her chicken salad. 

"Did you see the parade?" I asked. 

She raised her heavy lids and I imagined 
ineffable scorn in the depths of her eyes. 

"I did not. I live in Brooklyn. They parade 
all right, but, as Adolf's father says, when 
they come to fight, ach — " 

Then quite suddenly she transfixed me 
with her gaze. 

"You are from Schottland, you say; how 
soon haf you come?" 



As Others See Her 31 

I replied that I had been exactly eight days 
in the country. 

"But vy did you come, for what reason? 
They do not allow much travel; there is the 
difficulty of passports." 

I said I had come to make some talk about 
the need for food conservation in America. 
Then a slow passion, like a consuming fire, 
seemed to gather in her bosom, and she 
brought down her heavy hand with a thud 
which shook the crockery on the frail table, 
and attracted the notice of those nearest to 
us. 

Observing that, she took care to lower her 
voice when she spoke, but it had concentrated 
force and hatred in it. 

"Himmel! Food conservation, soon they 
vill make life impossible for us. We are no 
longer a free people, but slaves of our masters. 
For me, I haf given my son because I could 
not help myself. He vos drafted and we had 
no choice. But my food I gif up for no von, 
and, look you, it iss no good at all, this talk 



32 As Others See Her 

about vinning the var at the table. There is 
only von vay of vinning the var, and only 
von country in the vorld that vill do it. 
Come, Minna, you haf eaten enough. Ve 
vill go." 

And she departed with a noisy rustling of 
skirts, without a motion of farewell. If ever 
hostility to any cause blazed in a human 
soul, it did in hers; her large, vacuous face 
was convulsed by its malignance. Bad news 
from the fighting fronts was good news to 
her, and even the sacrifice of Adolf would not 
be grudged, provided the war was won by 
"the von country in the vorld." 

I pondered on how many in Belgium, and 
no doubt in Germany, had been shot for less. 
Also having come up against one of the dark 
forces which had made America's entry into 
the war so perilous and complicated an 
undertaking, a new understanding came to 
me. I left my luncheon half consumed and 
sallied forth into the open air to try and get 
rid of the miasma which oppressed me. 



As Others See Her 33 

Seeking some diversion from the heavi- 
ness of thought, I paused a little later to 
listen to the vapourings of a street orator at 
the corner of Madison Square. He was more 
blatant and unconvincing than his confreres 
to whom I had sometimes listened "away 
back home" in Hyde Park or on Tower 
Hill. 

One learns very little from these weird 
exponents of unpopular causes, their argu- 
ments almost invariably degenerating into 
mere personal abuse hurled at the head of 
some trust, or some individual capitalist. 

But the crowd always interested me. I 
never got away from the pathos of it. Nobody 
ever laughed or cheered, or offered the 
smallest sign either of approval or disap- 
proval. The courage which inspired these 
stump orators to orate to such a stolid crew 
struck me as sublime. One must suppose 
that the mere talking somehow relieved 
them, there could be no other explanation. 

Among so many outward evidences of the 



34 ^s Others See Her 

great upheaval it was a relief to meet, one 
day in a Broadway chop-house, an old man 
who had never heard of the war. He had a 
face like a rather tired cherub and looked 
like a decayed artist or poet, most pictur- 
esquely attired in a flowing cloak somewhat 
suggestive of stage property. 

He was a bit of a visionary, quite willing 
to talk over his poached ^^g and cafe-au-lait. 
He confided to me that he earned a modest 
livelihood at a picture store as a cleaner and 
restorer of gold frames. 

He must, I think, have painted pictures 
himself at one stage in his career and he 
certainly had a wide knowledge of art, 
speaking familiarly of the great pictures and 
with accurate knowledge of where they were 
housed. 

The faces of the people I observed in these 
places of resort, as well as in trolleys, sub- 
ways, and in the streets, seemed to me to be 
set in an invincible gravity. 

Perhaps it was a war-time expression, but 



As Others See Her 35 

there remains an indelible memory. The 
dearth of smiles in New York streets! 

How is it that in every big city there are 
thousands of women who appear to have 
nothing to do except throng the streets, 
crowd round shop windows, and congest the 
aisles in department stores? The spectacle in 
London had often raised this question in my 
mind, but it was impossible to get away from 
it in New York. No matter at what hour one 
sallied forth there they were, moving auto- 
matically, a never-ending procession, well- 
dressed, smug, wearing a happy air of 
leisurely preoccupation. 

Watching them in the stores, one observed 
that they were all buying lavishly and that 
war-time prices had no terrors for them. All 
the lunch counters and the store restaurants 
filled up with their pervasive presence long 
before noon. Where do they all come from.^ 
What kind of homes do they possess, and 
who looks after these homes .^ Is there no 



36 As Others See Her 

baking, cooking, washing, mending, or clean- 
ing to be done in them, and if there is, who 
does it? From what remote family burrows 
do they come, and if commuters, of what 
calibre is the commuters' life? I never ob- 
tained any answer to these wonderings, but 
left America at the point of interrogation 
concerning them. They were a leisurely, 
happy, interested crowd, though immensely 
serious. 

To me shopping in department stores is a 
chastening experience. There is not time in 
the whole world to enable you to get what 
you want in them. If I had my way I should 
sweep them all with a besom off the face of 
the earth, and restore the small trader, your 
personal friend, who always had the mer- 
chandise you wanted, and whom you could 
consult regarding it, assured that he would 
give you the benefit of his advice and 
experience. 

Department stores are like too many of the 
big hotels, the only interest they have in you 



As Others See Her 37 

is a financial one. Their specious advertise- 
ments promise you all sorts of intimate and 
personal service, but I should like to find a 
place where these fine promises are made 
good. There may have been something about 
me that repelled the sales-ladies, though at 
home I am considered a meek, inoffensive 
shopper, generally knowing her own mind, 
and giving no trouble. 

Their deportment troubled me a good deal. 
The sales-ladies seem to possess everything 
except the one essential of their calling, i.e., 
to persuade and invite you to buy. Take it 
or leave it, was the impression given, and 
the sooner you made up your mind about it 
the better. 

There was also a familiarity about their 
address which brought one sharply to realiza- 
tion that America is the land of freedom, 
where no class distinctions exist or are 
tolerated. I am not through with this solemn 
myth yet, but would only remark here that 
while the last thing on earth one wants is 



38 As Others See Her 

servility, yet there is a difference between 
that repulsive quality and courtesy. There 
are grades, and sales-ladies ought to be 
taught to observe them, and to acquire, 
even through chastening, some abiding 
standard which will attract and not 
repel. 

But while I had often the greatest diffi- 
culty in getting simple wants attended to in 
these vast and wearying halls of merchan- 
dise, I must record an excess of attention 
which I have never been able satisfactorily 
to explain to myself or to any one else. 

The incident happened in a quite well- 
known ladies' hair-dressing saloon in New 
York, where I had gone for some treatment 
for my hair which appeared to be affected 
by the American climate, and to be desirous 
of parting company from its legitimate 
dwelling-place. 

In the course of these treatments, I had 
had a good deal of intermittent talk with the 
proprietress, a well-informed woman, espe- 



As Others See Her 39 

cially about New York celebrities. On pay- 
ing my last ivisit and my bill before sailing, 
I expressed my gratitude for her kind atten- 
tion, and the trouble she had taken to serve 
me. She instantly threw her arms round my 
neck, and kissed me affeotionately, at the 
same time imploring me to write from the 
other side and let her know how I was getting 
on. It was one of the odd happenings one 
wishes another could have witnessed. I am 
assured, however, that it is an unusual one. 

I was much moved by the spectacle of 
the waving flags on Fifth Avenue, the 
visible expression of the people's will to 
victory, and the little crosses in the windows 
pathetically proclaiming the universal de- 
termination to help forward the work of 
love and mercy which must follow in the 
wake of war and help repair its wastage. 

Accustomed to our grim repression of 
national, sometimes even of natural, feeling, 
I was for the moment bewildered, imagining 



40 As Others See Her 

that some victory of which I had not heard 
at sea was being celebrated. 

Then the beauty of it all struck home. If 
only we had done .a little more waving of 
flags, laid aside the garment of our national 
reserve, and very particularly more enthu- 
siastically shown our fighting men our im- 
measurable pride in them as they marched 
out or came home in broken remnants, pos- 
sibly both we and they might have continued 
the struggle with a better heart. 

My eyes never fell on the tiny service flag 
in a home window without going back in 
memory to a grey and cheerless morning in 
Rouen when I rose at cockcrow to watch a 
handful of the boys go down the long avenue 
from the camp to entrain for "up the line." 

One passing dear to me was in that thin 
marching column, and I wanted him to 
know I was there, thinking of and praying 
for him. But lo, when they came in sight, I, 
who was thinking of only one, felt, as they 
were enfolded in the encircling mists, that 



As Others See Her 41 

they had melted into one great pathos of 
sonship and that I was mother to them all. 
So my heart warmed to all the service flags 
of America, great and small, and took pride 
in their record. 

The war has revealed the oneness of 
fatherhood and motherhood, and, greatest 
of all, has brought into strong relief the 
sonship with God which gave our boys the 
courage they needed in the day of testing on 
the field of battle. 



IV 

I BEGAN my work where I least expected 
to begin it, in the houses of the rich. A 
great many fairy tales have been circulated 
regarding millionaires' houses. We have even 
had wafted to us across the Atlantic whispers 
of golden stair-rails studded with precious 
stones. 

It is firmly believed in " the old country," 
to use the affectionate Canadian title for 
England, that every penniless emigrant head- 
ing for the shores of America has the glorious 
chance of achieving that golden stair-rail and 
all it stands for. It is popularly supposed in 
many quarters even yet that the moment he 
arrives he begins, by some mysterious auto- 
matic process, to accumulate the dollars 
which in due course will convert him into a 
copper king, a steel or oil magnate, or in the 
presidential control of a great trust. 

It is quite extraordinary what fascination 
such fairy tales have for the imagination. 



As Others See Her ,,43 

I have to admit that in my walks abroad 
I took a lively interest In the exterior of the 
millionaires' houses, industriously pointed 
out to me by casual acquaintances. The 
plainness of their exteriors, and the total 
absence of any surrounding space to throw 
their majestic outlines into relief, gave but 
little indication of the glories within. When 
in course of time I began to have a certain 
amount of intimate acquaintance with some 
of these interiors, I found most of them 
beautiful and very few of them dazzling to 
the eye. Severity of outline, the kind that 
has to be paid for by large cheques, was very 
often the keynote. I have never had any use 
for the kind of house that through the 
acquisitiveness of its possessor resolves itself 
into a museum. 

Surely the inward joy of every treasure is 
its rarity. The Japanese have a wise concep- 
tion of what really gratifies the eye without 
tiring it; hence the sparse decoration of their 
houses. Those who live in millionaires' 



44 As Others See Her 

houses are in the main simple folk, never at 
any time desirous of thrusting their magnifi- 
cence and their possessions on the stranger. 
But then I was fortunate in meeting those 
who, under the stress of the new call to 
service and consecration, had suddenly real- 
ized how much there is in the world to-day 
which money cannot buy. 

It did not take long to discover that the 
war spirit of America had its being first in 
the hearts of the women. At the m.oment 
when I arrived in New York the Voluntary 
Food Conservation scheme promulgated from 
Washington was coming into operation. 
There is no harm in admitting now that in 
England voluntary food conservation failed 
all along the line. 

It is a somewhat chastening reflection, and 
one of the many new things we have learned 
about ourselves in this war that food is one 
of the supreme tests of humanity. We see 
to what pass the lack of it has brought 



As Others See Her 45 

millions of our fellow beings In Europe and 
the Near East, and how hunger breeds 
anarchy and all the dreadful spectres which 
follow In Its train. In England we dallied a 
long time with voluntary rationing, depend- 
ing on the national will and the Idealism of 
our people. 

But somehow It did not come off. People 
will give up cheerfully new clothes, large 
houses, motor cars, amusements, but they 
have a different code of honour where food 
is concerned. When the shoe pinches there, 
we behold a reversion to type, a revival of 
primeval Instincts. 

We had hoarding, shameless hoarding, of 
the necessities of life, to say nothing of the 
luxuries. In places where we were entitled to 
look for something better. There was no 
peace In the land until we followed Ger- 
many's lead and Introduced the card-ration- 
ing system. 

America, of course, was not subjected to 
the supreme test, because never at any time 



4-6 As Others See Her 

was her abundance threatened. All she was 
asked to do was voluntarily to abstain from 
certain articles of food in order that the 
supplies sent abroad might be maintained, 
and when necessary increased. 

She responded nobly to that appeal. But 
no one knows how she would have faced a 
real shortage, nor whether her people would 
have consistently maintained the high level 
of generosity which filled us with profound 
wonder and gratitude. I rather think myself 
that humanity is much the same all the 
world over, and that the test applied to one 
section may with certain reservations be 
taken as typical of all. 

But in this conclusion I may be quite 
wrong. 

Seeing several paragraphs in the news- 
papers concerning the voluntary conserva- 
tion movement in New York, I wrote to the 
lady entrusted with its organization, ex- 
plaining to her that I had just arrived from 



As Others See Her 47 

England with a good deal of first-hand in- 
formation regarding the food situation and 
home economics in my own country, and 
should be glad to pass that information 
on for the benefit of the cause she had at 
heart. 

At her house, within the next few days, 
to a most sympathetic audience I explained 
the whole situation. After that, the difficulty 
was to keep pace with the number of invita- 
tions to repeat the message. I was then 
greatly struck, though by no means for the 
first time, at the crowning advantage per- 
sonal experience has over acquired or second- 
hand information. 

My knowledge of conditions both in the 
French and English war zones, and my 
somewhat vivid personal acquaintance with 
a prolonged course of devastating Zeppelin 
raids, paved the way for my appeal for food 
conservation as nothing else could have done. 
I can never forget the quick response to 
that appeal in these great houses, nor the 



48 As Others See Her 

pathetic eagerness of rich women to be- 
come part of the world-wide sisterhood of 
service. 

I came to the conclusion quite early that 
there was no height of sacrifice to which 
American women would not pledge them- 
selves, and that they would faithfully redeem 
that pledge if the need were but shown. 
Opportunity and responsibility make women 
as well as men, yet with a difference. For 
whereas men have to fight, using their 
primeval instincts for the maintenance of the 
family, there is in the service women rendef 
to both family or country a singular selfless- 
ness, not usually found in men. 

There is nothing profound or surprising in 
this observation. Service was God's ordina- 
tion for women from the beginning, and it is 
when this ordination is despised and set 
aside by individuals or groups of women that 
confusion and disaster ensue. 

In connection with the appeal in New York 
for food conservation, two meetings stand 



As Others See Her 49 

out in my gallery of remembrance. One was 
a convention of housekeepers belonging to 
the most select circles in the city, attendance 
only by invitation. The gathering interested 
me keenly because a representative of al- 
most every well-known American family 
was present. 

With the customary scorn of time notice- 
able through the entire length and breadth 
of the country (confounding to one ac- 
customed to conserve minutes like pearls of 
price), the meeting assembled itself in the 
most leisurely manner, which certainly af- 
forded the quiet observer in a corner excellent 
opportunity for study of interesting types. 
Two predominated, the large, opulent type, 
which so easily gives the suggestion of being 
overdressed, and the slim, elegant, well-bred 
type always a joy to behold. But there were 
all sorts. Gorgeous furs were worn, and pearls 
beyond the dream of avarice. 

I lost myself for quite a few minutes trying 
to compute how much food for starving 



50 As Others See Her 

Europe could be purchased by the jewels in 
the audience. 

The hats were almost without exception 
small and close-fitting, so that there was no 
obscuring of the features. There were many- 
striking and some lovely faces, as well as 
the mediocre ones, which, however, if illu- 
mined from within, sometimes linger longest 
in happy memory. The gathering seemed 
like one large, intimate family. There was 
quite a buzz of talk and much fluttering 
from one seat to another, exchanging greet- 
ings. About twenty minutes late the meeting 
commenced with an admirably delivered ad- 
dress from the chairman. She was followed 
by Dr. Alonzo Taylor, one of Mr. Hoover's 
ablest representatives who had just returned 
from Europe, and was therefore able to give 
a very clear picture of the situation and the 
urgency of the need. The meeting was then 
thrown open, and I ventured on a few re- 
marks, to which they listened with very 
cordial interest. The net result of the gather- 



As Others See Her 51 

ing was a deepening of the pledge to conserve 
food and I was certain that it would be 
faithfully kept. 

The secomi meeting was held on a Sunday- 
afternoon in a hall crammed to capacity by 
a very different kind of audience. It was 
convened by the chefs of the families of whom 
I have just been speaking. Before three 
thousand persons, the chefs pledged them- 
selves to carry out to the letter the instruc- 
tions from Washington. The meeting was 
presided over by a Scotch butler who looked 
like a statesman and spoke like one. 

New York was then in the throes of war 
service. I was overwhelmed by the number 
of women's organizations devoting them- 
selves with unexampled ardour and devotion 
to the great cause. All of them had well- 
equipped offices and abundant staffs in 
uniform all eager and willing to serve. 

As in England, the secret desire of every 
woman's heart was to be needed and sent 



52 As Others See Her 

"over there." The heart-sickness of hope 
deferred, however, was never suffered to 
impair the quality of the service rendered at 
home. 

If I were asked to name the rock on which 
the activities of American womanhood would 
be likely to split, I should unhesitatingly 
reply over-organization. The number of 
leagues and councils and associations all 
doing the same work might with advantage 
have been enrolled under one banner. Ventur- 
ing to air this suggestion, however, I was 
assured passionately that each organization 
was individual and apart, and that no other 
could do its work so well. 

There was an obvious yet not unwhole- 
some jealousy between these organizations, 
and a rivalry which undoubtedly helped 
towards greater efficiency. The women who 
had accepted office took their obligations 
most seriously, and suffered nothing, not 
even home duties I am afraid, to interfere 
with their conscientious discharge. They 



As Others See Her 53 

slaved long hours at their desks, or spent 
themselves travelling and advocating the 
claims of their organization with a zeal that 
knew no weariness. 

Many of these were women who had never 
before known anything about work except 
as something they paid other people to do. 
Like the lilies of the field they had toiled 
not nor spun. Now, having tasted the joy of 
work and the sweet sleep which follows on 
it, will they ever go back? 

I wonder — but I do not know. 



WHOEVER conceived and promoted 
the idea of the Red Cross in the 
window deserved well of his country. There 
could be no symbol in war time more appeal- 
ing or more invincible. For whatever may be 
the mental attitude towards war, there can 
be no dissentient voice regarding the work 
of mercy required to repair its cruel ravages. 

In our country the hospital service was 
admittedly the only one ready for war, 
and never during the anguish and the need 
of the years of war did it prove inadequate 
to the demands made upon it. 

Of the work of the Red Cross chapters in 
America I can only say that I was thrilled 
and astounded by the completeness and 
thoroughness with which the work had been 
organized. Nothing was more suggestive of 
the happy rivalry existing in the service 
than the assurance, passionately given to 
me in every State, city, and township I 



As Others See Her SS 

visited, that their quota was the largest 
and most efficient that had been offered on 
the altar of service. 

The figures, increasing by leaps and 
bounds, regarding bandages and dressings, 
bewildered at last by their sum total. 

I was immensely touched, hearing at 
Hartford, Connecticut, that a considerable 
portion of the year's labours had gone down 
in a torpedoed ship. Daunted or dismayed? 
Never! The devoted workers in that chapter 
immediately set to work to make good and 
surpass the former output. It meant a re- 
doubling of effort, that was all. 

As was the case in England, the Red Cross, 
perhaps more than any branch of war work, 
helped to break down the barriers between 
class and class. I know how the word "class" 
is hated in America, which is surprising be- 
cause nowhere in the world are there more 
classes, between which the dividing line is 
sharply drawn. Where no position is very 
clearly defined, perhaps this is inevitable. 



56 As Others See Her 

I always indulged in an inward smile 
when the subject of class distinction came 
up, as it quite frequently did. There was a 
certain unconvincing naivete in the attitude 
of those who professed to scorn it. 

I happened one night at a dinner table to 
speak of a village, well known to me in 
England, where feudal conditions prevail to 
the extent that the village children, at the 
order and discretion of the lady of the 
manor, have to wear red cloaks and hoods, 
and march in them to church on Sundays. 
My listeners professed to be revolted by 
this interference with personal liberty, but 
one could detect a secret admiration and 
a full appreciation of the picturesque 
effect. 

In spite of all the cosmopolitanism of 
America, it is one of the most conservative 
countries in the world, and in some direc- 
tions one of the least progressive. The system 
of living, fundamentally based on the older 
civilizations from which the people originally 



As Others See Her 57 

sprang, continually proves this. The funda- 
mental traits more and more assert them- 
selves, and heredity is more powerful than 
we are willing to acknowledge. 

In Boston, for instance, there flourishes a 
conservatism which is not excelled, hardly 
even equalled in England now. ^ 

I am aware that I am treading on very 
thin ice here, but if these few impressions 
are to have any value a certain amount of 
candour must be allowed. 

The subject happens to interest me a 
good deal because I have lived for the past 
twelve years in one of the most feudal county 
towns in England. 

When outsiders for business or pleasure 
select it as a place of residence, they have no 
choice as to the kind of position they propose 
to occupy in it. It is defined for them by 
certain laws immutable as those of the 
Medes and Persians. Your place in the social 
orbit is plainly indicated and you are ex- 



5 8 As Others See Her 

pected to revolve in it peaceably, according 
to immemorial tradition. When you don't, 
you merely upset yourself, you don't alter 
the attitude of other people. Sometimes there 
descend upon our quietude breezy hustlers 
from the outside, who think they can "wake 
up the drybones," a favourite term used to 
describe our lives. And very often they start 
by asking the wrong people to tea together. 
Only the very new do that, and after a proper 
interval they invariably leave off. It is no 
use trying to be a good mixer in our dear 
but mediaeval town, because the whole 
litany of life In it is that there shall be no 
mixing, but that each unit properly labelled 
shall remain in that place to which, not 
Providence, but his good neighbours, have 
called him and more especially her. 

It is predicted that the war after the war 
will pronounce the doom of such com- 
munities, but I "hae my doots." 

Anyway, I do not expect to live to see it. 
I am not even sure that I want to. There is 



As Others See Her 59 

a certain Old- World charm about life in such 
a place, more especially if one has been 
blessed with the saving grace of humour. 
That I admit is essential, to lighten the 
partial social gloom under which a con- 
siderable section of the community is obliged 
to live. 

We are all perfectly friendly, understand, 
only in an aloof, detached sort of way. 
When our neighbours are in trouble, we go 
to them, if the terms of our intimacy permit 
It; if not, we always send flowers and polite 
enquiries. We know the houses which we 
may enter to offer personal service and the 
doors at which we merely enquire. 

How does one know where to begin and 
where to leave off in America ? 

Does any one ever really begin, or do you 
just act on primeval impulses, cultivating 
people if you like them and ignoring them 
if you don't? 

There is nothing so pronounced as that in 
our little town. Good manners forbid it. 



6o As Others See Her 

Everything is politely veiled, even hostility 
of which a considerable deal exists. It is 
only the persistent climbers who sometimes 
overstep the boundaries of good taste in 
their frantic efforts to step on the magic 
carpet which proclaims that they have safely 
arrived. The magic carpet is not altogether 
a myth, though I have never seen it. It used 
to be spread, so I have been told, in the Shire 
Hall at the County Ball, and the social status 
of the dancers and their attendants was 
defined by their proximity to the carpet. If 
you had the right to take up your place at 
once upon it, why, then the lesser lights 
bowed down. 

Are there no magic carpets in America.'* 
Are not the Aubussons and the priceless 
old Persian rugs as arbitrary in their pro- 
nouncement? I should like an answer to 
that. The true one would be enlightening. 

But to return to our muttons, war service 
has undoubtedly done wonders in the way 



As Others See Her 6i 

of reconciling formerly irreconcilable ele- 
ments. 

One of the most distinguished and beloved 
of American war workers told me that her 
experience had been a complete revelation 
to her. As chairman of the Women's Council 
of National Defence in her own State she 
came into contact with all sorts and con- 
ditions of people, who really never existed 
for her before, except in the abstract. A rich 
woman and acknowledged leader of society, 
she, for the first time in her life, came into 
close relations with women of quite different 
social strata, the common bond being work. 

The devotion of her colleagues in the ser- 
vice was only equalled by her affectionate 
admiration for them. She learned that the 
fire of patriotism made It possible for a work- 
ing-woman, with her home to care for, to 
give certain regular hours to the work of the 
Council. These hours had to be paid for 
in a way that the rich and leisured do not 
perhaps quite understand. 



62 As Others See Her 

It meant an hour earlier up in the morn- 
ing, an hour later getting to bed at night, 
a curtailment of leisure and the sacrifice of 
most of the simple pleasures that had once 
illumined the drudgery of life, as so many- 
women know it. Being a rich woman, my 
friend was able to do many lovely things 
for those with whom she came in contact. 
And wherever possible these things were 
done in secret. She told me just one 
which I must set down because it touched 
me so profoundly that I have never for- 
gotten it. 

She observed that one of her co-workers 
was rather depressed and that the depres- 
sion did not wear off as the days went by, 
but rather increased, though it in no way 
impaired the quality of the service so freely 
rendered. 

If you care for a person, and are really 
interested, there is established a kind of 
telepathy which makes you very sensitive 
regarding changes in that person's state of 



As Others See Her 63 

mind. A little judicious questioning, never 
Intrusive, at last elicited the fact that this 
woman's husband had lost his post and was 
finding It Impossible to obtain another one. 
They had been suffering, If not privation, 
at least the most acute anxiety regarding 
their present and their future. Yet she had 
carried on without saying a word, her pride 
and Independence forbidding her to make 
the slightest use of her position to further 
her own private ends. 

It was a glorious opportunity for her chief, 
who Immediately set to work to use her own 
influence, which naturally was wide, to secure 
another post for the husband of her fellow 
worker. The offer of one came to him In due 
course and so delicately was It done that the 
recipient never knew the source from whence 
it sprang. Observe the fineness of the gift, of 
sisterly service! They were comforted and 
uplifted, thinking that merit was merely 
being recognized In the usual way. The 
brightness returned to the woman's eyes and 



64 ^s Others See Her 

the joy of life to her work. She does not 
know to this day what her chief did for her. 
My eyes filled up at this beautiful story, and 
I just said that I could have rendered the 
service joyfully, but that I was not sure 
whether I could have held my tongue about 
it. I did not know this splendid specimen of 
American womanhood in pre-war days, but 
I know what she is now. And when the claims 
of active war service slacken, she will not 
return to the old round of social pleasure, 
but remain for all time in the service of 
humanity. 

I came across others, less fine, and some 
who as in England used their war service 
as a cloak for social ambition and social 
supremacy. But they surely were in the 
minority. 

The over-zeal for war service sometimes 
afforded a little comic relief. 

A very choice bit came under my observa- 
tion one night in the ballroom of a private 



As Others See Her 65 

house on Fifth Avenue, where a meeting of 
the Junior League had been convened for 
the purpose of considering how practical 
economy in clothes could be adopted as a 
war measure without actually going into 
uniform. 

An interesting, and at times rather lively, 
discussion was contributed to by some of the 
older members. The subject was standard 
war dress, which was to consist of a walking 
suit for mornings and a dressy garment for 
afternoon or demi-toilette wear. 

After much diligent enquiry and searching 
through the stores, certain patterns had been 
agreed upon, and were paraded on a man- 
nequin for exhibition to the prospective 
wearers. 

The parade began amid breathless excite- 
ment, and many thrills of expectation. The 
sweet faces of the buds and their chaperons 
presented a study in expressions. The parade 
was received in ominous silence. Towards 
the close a handsome young matron sitting 



66 As Others See Her 

beside me remarked, with an uplift of her 
level brows: — 

"I hope I love my country, but can you 
imagine me in that?^^ 

I could not. It was the epitaph of the 
standard suit. 



VI 

« AMERICA? Oh, yes, I dessay It's all rite 
J^JL for them as likes it." 

I had begun to like it so much that this 
guarded comment somewhat dashed my 
enthusiasm. The woman who uttered it was 
from my own country, and we were sitting 
together in her living-room on the sixteenth 
floor of an apartment house on the East 
Side. I had been asked by a friend at home to 
look her up and try to discover how she had 
fared in the land of her adoption. 

In England she had been a housemaid in 
excellent service, her husband whom I shall 
call Raikes, a jobbing gardener at the same 
place. 

I felt oppressed by the closeness of the 
atmosphere, the narrowness of the space, the 
total absence of anything in which a house- 
wifely woman could take a proper pride. I 
remembered the spacious rooms, the good 
food, the beautiful surroundings in which 



68 As Others See Her 

I had last seen her, and could have smiled at 
the popular superstition pertaining there 
regarding the good fortune she and her 
husband had achieved in America. 

She informed me by rather slow degrees that 
Raikes was not now working at his trade, 
but was employed as a packer in a dry-goods 
store where he earned three dollars per day. 

In England that would be considered a 
high wage, even for a man with a wife and 
family of three to support, and I commented 
on the difference between it and the six 
dollars per week he had earned at home. 

She merely shook a discouraged head. 

"It don't go fur in this country," she 
observed stolidly. "A dollar ain't worth 
more than a shillin' at 'ome, an' the stuif 
you buys with it ain't as good. Take the 
boots for the children. Paper I calls 'em, 
nuthin' but brown paper blackened all over 
to look like the real thing. Do you remember 
the boots old Silas Peart used to make at 
'ome? Miss Lucy gave me a pair oncet an' 



As Others See Her 69 

I've got 'em yet, bin soled an' 'eeled they've 
bin, six times — " 

I gently remarked that no leather appeared 
to possess the staying quality of ancient 
days. 

As I spoke, I found it difficult to recognize 
in this dun-coloured woman with the anxious, 
somewhat furtive air, the rosy-cheeked girl 
I remembered in the old manor house in the 
Lea Valley. Her house was neat and her 
person too, though I had taken her unawares, 
but there was a lack of vitality in the 
atmosphere, moral as well as physical. The 
harp of life was obviously out of tune. 

Once the natural English reticence was 
gotten over, she was quite willing to expand, 
more especially about her children. 

"They're all quite well, playin' in the 
streets, they are. No, there ain't anywhere 
else an' when they'se shet up 'ere, they gits 
desprit. They're growin' up shockin', but 
don't tell Miss Lucy — " 

That was a pathetic touch. Miss Lucy 



70 As Others See Her 

was the only mistress she had ever known, 
the wise, tender-hearted woman, who, though 
she had never held child of her own at her 
breast, was a born mother, who cared greatly 
for every human thing that came within her 
ken. Evidently Mrs. Raikes's thoughts were 
often turned longingly towards the Little 
Manor of Hormead and its gracious mistress. 

No wise interviewer, however, seeks to in- 
fluence the object of his attention one way 
or another; if he knows his business, he is 
fully aware that he gets the best results by 
allowing the stream to meander in its own 
course. I had no particular object excepting 
to learn of her welfare; nevertheless, I 
learned a lot from Bethia Raikes in that 
brief half-hour we sat together in the living- 
room of the East Side apartment house. She 
had not fared to her satisfaction in the 
Mecca of the emigrant's dream. 

"It ain't as if it were an or'nery street," 
she went on passionately. "There's all kinds 
down there, more speshully the kinds people 



As Others See Her 71 

brought up like I was have no use fur. You 
can't sort 'em out. My Jerry, only twelve, 
would smoke as many cigs as his father if he 
could git 'em." 

"Haven't you any control over Jerry?" 
I asked. 

"No," she answered stolidly. "There ain't 
any control in New York streets." There 
was obviously but one reply to this startling 
statement, but before I could make it she 
went on : — 

"All sorts down there, folks with heathen- 
ish names, Germans first and foremost pre- 
tendin' they likes the war w'en they don't, 
celebratin' in most 'ouses w'en our boys are 
bein' mowed down over there. Tell me, 'ave 
many gone out of the village at 'ome?" 

I said they had all gone, and she rocked 
herself to and fro. 

"But the Germans ain't alius the worst; 
they're peaceable, 'ard-workin' folk as fur 
as they goes. Eyetalians we've got, and 
Poles, an' Russians, an' all sorts what eat 



72 As Others See Her 

queer food an' speak a lingo we carn't follow. 
As fur religion there ain't any. My chillen 
are growin' up without it." 

I asked why they didn't keep up the habit 
of church-going, since there were plenty of 
churches in the city that would have been 
glad to welcome and incorporate them. 

" It ain't the same. Yes, there are churches 
wheer nobody don't know anybody. It ain't 
like at 'ome wheer Sunday was the best day 
of the week, wheer you could make sure of 
seein' the folks you knew. Sunday mornin's 
'ere, Raikes don't git up till dinner time, and 
I'm busy all the mornin' a-gittin' of it 
ready. That's 'ow most of us wimmin live 
'ere on the East Side, cookin' w'en we've got 
anything to cook, an' w'en we ain't, doin' 
without." 

"But is your husband not in regular 
employment?" I asked, dismayed by the 
suggestion of such irregular meals. 

Her expression informed me that I had 
touched the spot. 



As Others See Her 73 

"The Sunday pipers say we'se goin' to be 
a dry state, but If it ever comes it'll be too 
late for some of 'em, Raikes among 'em. 
They'll git drink from somewhere, dry or not 
dry, and it'll be the business of somebody to 
see that they gits it. They're all plum sure 
about that." 

I asked then why she and Raikes had not 
gone into the country on their arrival. Life 
would have been easier and more whole- 
some there and he could have stuck to his 
own calling. 

Another flicker, resembling a spasm, 
crossed her dull face. 

"It's what we oughter done, but Raikes, 
'e was fair spell-bound with Noo York. All 
the Broadway lights an' sech like got 'im. 
*It's like fairyland, ain't it Beth?' he says. 
* We've never lived before, ole gel, an' we'll 
stop 'ere.'" 

"But even yet would it not be wise to 
pull up stakes?" 

"Too late; 'e's forgotten most he knew 



74 ^s Others See Her 

about gardens, an' anyways it would n't 
interest 'im any more. 'E's quite 'appy 
'ere, an' don't want nuthin' else." 

After a moment she went on, wringing her 
hands in a queer soft way on her lap : — 

"It ain't any kind of a way for folks to 
live as we live 'ere all huddled on top o' 
one another. It breeds all kind of wickedness. 
I could tell you things, only I won't. I 
would n't like my dear Miss Lucy to know 
'em. Bless her dear 'eart, they'd keep her 
awake nights. You won't tell 'er, will you 
ma mr 

I suggested that people fared no better in 
the crowded cities at home, more especially 
in London, where overcrowding and the 
housing conditions generally in the quarters 
of the poor are shocking. She at least had 
three rooms, whereas it was well known that 
thousands upon thousands had to live and 
move and have their being in houses of one 
room. 

But the argument left her cold and un- 



As Others See Her 75 

convinced regarding the relative differences 
or merits of the two countries. 

She had her knife, as the saying goes, in 
the heart of New York. Bethia Raikes was 
out-and-out a homesick woman, and her 
thoughts of home were therefore distorted, 
as well as her views of the land of her adop- 
tion. 

"You won't tell my dear Miss Lucy," she 
repeated earnestly. " I would n't like 'er to 
know we're not gittin' on a treat. I've 
always written cheerful, because I didn't 
want 'er to know. I wish you could 'ave seen 
my li'l' Lucy narrtid for my old missus. She's 
the pick of the market bunch." 

I promised to send back the best report I 
could, but begged for some bright spots, a 
compensation or two to colour my tale. 

"There's the movies," she said, brighten- 
ing perceptibly. "I goes an' takes the chillen 
whenever I can spare a quarter. The only 
time I'm reely happy is when I gits in front 
of the screen, an' sees Mary Pickford an' 



76 As Others See Her 

gits a larf on Charlie. It was deadly dull in 
'Ormead, don't you think, ma'm? Folks 
would n't ever want to leave the country ef 
something could be done to keep 'em in it.'* 

I was impressed by this viewpoint, having 
sat on a commission to discuss this very 
question. But we had never got much further 
than discussion, the brightening of village 
life to a degree sufficient to prevent exodus 
to large towns being less simple than it 
seems. 

Bethia meandered on: — 

"Folks should all stop in their own coun- 
tries, thet's what I think. If them as do 
emigrate would tell the truth, folks would n't 
be so keen on it as they are. Emigration 
reports is mostly lies. There ain't no fortius 
to be made anywhere cep'in' by them that's 
born wiv a silver spoon in their mouths. 
Raikes 'e's punched his cousin Bill Cudham's 
'ead more than oncet for the Hes 'e sent 'ome 
to 'Ormead about America. Bill's a bar- 
tender in the Bowery, not a bit o' good, an' 



As Others See Her 77 

wot's wuss, 'e's bin an' married a coloured 



woman." 



I felt relieved after a time to escape from 
the sordid area of the Raikes's family history. 
So far as I could see at the moment nothing 
could be done to help them; they had simply 
become bits of drift on the measureless sea of 
East Side life. 

A little later in the afternoon I was taking 
tea in another apartment house overlooking 
Central Park. 

The mistress of that delightful apartment 
was a comparatively young woman married 
for eight years to a prosperous business man. 
She was a pretty creature who had quickly 
acquired, in addition to her own, the dainty, 
elusive feminine charm of the land of her 
adoption. She showed me over her pretty 
home, and I told her of my visit to the Raikes. 
She was sympathetic up to a point. 

"I suppose it is pretty awful on the East 
Side — I've always heard that it is, espe- 
cially in the hot weather. No, I don't interest 



78 Js Others See Her 

myself much in that sort of thing. Ted 
would n't like it. He doesn't even like me to 
go anywhere by subway, though I sometimes 
do without telling him. You see there isn't 
time when one gets in one's bridge and teas 
and what not. Just now, of course, it's my 
Red Cross work; I assure you I work like a 
galley slave at it. I had to get a special 
dispensation from my commandant to stop 
In for you this afternoon." 

"Do you like America?" I asked. 

"Why, yes, of course, don't you? You get 
used to it, and then you like it so much you 
don't ever want to leave it. Life would be too 
slow at home now — I just could n't stand 
it. But tell me how dear old smoky London 
looks. I shall always love it, of course, and 
directly the war's over, Ted has promised 
me a long visit home." 

There was no child in that pretty and quite 
ample home, but when I touched on it she 
smiled a little in a detached sort of way. 

"We don't want children. Fortunately Ted 



As Others See Her 79 

and I are agreed about that. It would mean 
giving up golf and heaps of things we're both 
passionately devoted to. Besides, we'd have 
to leave this house." 

"Why? There seems ample room in it for 
one small child or even two." 

"But It isn't allowed. Our landlord doesn't 
let to people with children; it's one of the 
conditions of tenancy." 

I thought it awful, and said so, but she 
merely bubbled with laughter. 

"No, there isn't a child in the block. How 
many people? Oh, about a hundred, I sup- 
pose; no, not all old, heaps of them like us. 
A little later, perhaps, Ted and I would n't 
mind, but just at present there doesn't seem 
to be room in life for another solitary thing." 

"A little later, perhaps!" No room in life 
for the only thing which really gives meaning 
to it! 

As I was whisked down from the eleventh 
floor to the street, certain words, of Holy 
Writ buzzed in my ears. 



8o As Others See Her 

"Suffer the little children, and forbid 
them not, for of such is the Kingdom of 
Heaven." 

Something in the atmosphere had stifled 
me even more effectively than the mingled 
odours permeating Bethia Raikes's apart- 
ment on the East Side. I was glad to step 
aside into the park and try to walk it off. 

There were very few pedestrians, but 
many automobiles flashinp along the wide 
roadways, on which the soft twilight was 
closing down converting New York into a 
dream city. About halfway across I was 
arrested by a dejected female figure huddled 
on the corner of a seat, with her face hidden 
in her hands. Nobody appeared to notice or 
disturb her, and there was no policeman in 
sight. It was impossible for me to pass her 
by, so making pause I asked her gently what 
ailed her and whether I could be of any use. 

She raised her head and I saw that tears 
had marked the channels on her pretty 



As Others See Her 8 1 

painted cheeks. She looked sullen and resent- 
ful just for a moment, but presently moved 
up a little, making room for me beside her. 
She began to talk after a bit in slow, dis- 
jointed sentences. She had come from the 
country not more than two years ago, lured 
by the promises of well-paid work and much 
enjoyment. She had roomed with her sister, 
married to a Dutchman who was employed 
at one of the wharves. They were all very 
poor, and she had merely shared a bed with 
the children, earning poor money as a 
machinist. 

Her sister took three quarters of her earn- 
ings for her keep, and what was left hardly 
sufficed to buy her clothes and modest 
lunches. 

Then she fell sick, and Jan, her brother-in- 
law, pretty soon showed her that her room 
was better than her company. 

She had had a spell of ill-luck, and in the 
end a desperate longing for some brightness, 
an escape from the sordid misery of life. 



82 As Others See Her 

had made her succumb to the temptation 
always lying in wait for a pretty girl in the 
streets of a great city. But he had tired of 
her, too, and married some one else, and now 
she was thrown out of her room and had no 
money to pay for another. 

No; she could n't go back to her sister; 
Jan had shut the door on her. They were 
respectable people and had no use for a girl 
like her. 

Incredible hardness, it seemed, and yet 
her story carried conviction! 

Asked whether, if she had the means, she 
would go back to her home village, she looked 
up at me with a curious brilliance in her eyes. 

"You betcher life," was all she said. "But 
there isn't anybody goin' to be sech a fool 
as gimme money for my railroad ticket. 
Them things only 'appen in books." 

I offered her the money on condition that 
she permitted me to buy her railroad ticket, 
as she called it, and put her on the train. 

We made that little journey together on 



As Others See Her 83 

the green omnibus that plies up and down 
Fifth Avenue and I put her on the train for 
Vermont. 

"You bet your Hfe she got out at the 
next station and is in New York now — " 
said one to whom I related the incident a 
few days later. 

And, oddly enough, he added, as the waif 
had done, "These things only happen in 
books." 

The wanderer in the byways occasionally 
finds that they happen in real life too. Any- 
way, I like to think she went back to Ver- 
mont. I have even pictured the meeting in 
the white farmhouse on the hill behind the 
stately line of poplar trees. 

If you go through life fully convinced that 
your fellow travellers are mostly rogues and 
vagabonds, why, you may take it from me 
that they are the only sort you will meet. 



VII 

I NEVER came to an end of questioning 
regarding the women's elubs which play- 
so large and important a part in the national 
life of America. We have a few women's 
clubs in our large cities, but none in the 
country. Club life, as understood by Ameri- 
can women, is therefore practically a sealed 
book to us. 

The London women's clubs, as known to 
me, are, with one, or perhaps two, notable 
exceptions, mere places of rendezvous, in 
which the real essence of club life created by 
unity of purpose and community of interest 
is conspicuous by its absence. 

Probably the true explanation of the fail- 
ure of women's clubs to take any very deep 
root in England is that we are not really 
clubable people. The air of remoteness and 
aloofness which enables us to maintain un- 
broken silence towards one another through 
an entire railway journey, would probably 



As Others See Her 85 

militate against the central ideal of club 
life, i.e., comradeship. 

I was beyond measure interested in the 
women's clubs, and as I was invited to speak 
at a large number of them, had ample op- 
portunity for making pretty extensive, and 
in some degree intimate, study of them. 

I approached the subject, I admit, with 
some prejudice, always remembering, at odd 
and provoking times, an adjective which 
had fallen from the lips of a highly intelligent 
American man we happened to entertain 
once as a guest in England. In reply to some 
question I put to him regarding the women's 
clubs, he described them as "accursed." I 
regarded him with a startled air, easily 
diagnosing some strong personal reason for 
his antipathy, but I was far too shy to ask 
for enlightenment. 

I could not make up my mind all the time 
I was in America whether the women's 
clubs were an asset to the national life. 

I spoke in a large number of club-houses 



86 As Others See Her 

in town and country, and carry away from 
these particular gatherings a vivid impres- 
sion of vast numbers of active, highly intel- 
ligent, and extraordinarily restless women 
who talked a great deal, often to considerable 
purpose. 

After the lapse of some months, I find that 
the restlessness is the dominant impression 
left with me. 

Perpetually I asked myself how it hap- 
pened that so many women who, judged 
by the ordinary standards of life, could not 
possibly be seeking to kill time, nor yet 
have much to kill, could afford to spend so 
many hours of each day at their clubs. 
Unless life differs tremendously from life in 
any other country, I could not just see how 
they did spare these hours, without neglect- 
ing or at least shirking something else. 

A house cannot be run successfully over 
the telephone nor yet by merely given orders 
to this one or that. It has to be pervaded by 
the personality of its mistress Ijke a subtle 



As Others See Her 87 

but most acceptable aroma. The difference 
between a house and a home Hes just there. 
It IS the amount of personal care a woman 
gives to the infinitesimal details which some 
call drudgery which makes the subtle differ- 
ence. 

Many years of faithful housekeeping, 
which I admit has frequently interfered with 
some of my cherished aims and ambitions, 
entitle me to ask how it is that my sisters in 
America have so much time to spare for their 
club life? Are they better organizers and 
conservers of time, more efficient in the 
housewifely arts, or just merely compro- 
misers ? 

I should like to have these questions 
answered in the good faith in which I ask 
them. They have interested and troubled me 
a good deal. 

In the auditorium of a woman's club in a 
flourishing Eastern town one afternoon I saw 
rather an odd happening. A meeting of three 



88 As Others See Her 

or four hundred had been called for the 
purpose of hearing about food conservation, 
then the question of the hour. 

Before I ascended the rostrum certain 
preliminary business connected with club 
affairs had to be gone through. These in- 
formal conferences, from which they never 
shut me out, afforded considerable oppor- 
tunity for learning about the ideals and 
policy of the club life and the mentality of 
its members. 

After the routine business of the meeting 
was got through, a member suddenly stood 
up in the auditorium and enquired whether 
she had the chairman's permission to speak. 
A nod reassured her, and she then explained 
that she was getting up a club supper In 
aid of some pet war charity. In order to 
obtain the necessary funds and make her 
effort a success, she had to appeal for gifts 
of food for the supper. She had her proposed 
menu In her mind ; its achievement, however, 
would depend on the response to her appeal. 



As Others See Her 89 

The price of the tickets, provided she secured 
the necessary supplies, would be sixty cents. 
She required pork and beans, cakes, butter, 
and sundry other items, all of which were 
asked for separately. The members willing 
to contribute either called out their names 
or bobbed up from working at their huge 
knitting-bags. 

It did not take long; the cause being popu- 
lar the response was generous; soon the suppli- 
ant had her notebook filled with the necessary 
guarantees, and with a word of thanks sat 
down, entirely pleased with herself and her 
fellow members. 

All she had to do now was to sell the 
tickets, but apparently that was not per- 
mitted in the meeting and guarantees of 
attendance were not asked for. The selling 
of tickets had to be a separate undertaking. 

Commenting later on this novel and in- 
teresting way of getting up an entertainment 
I found my hostess strangely wroth over it. 

"She won't make a success of it; the 



90 As Others See Her 

menu isn't what they Hke. Food hogs a lot 
of them are, no matter what the cause! 
Give them ice cream and chicken salad and 
they flock to it. They think of nothing but 
their insides." 

This seemed to me a heavy indictment, 
but as the ground seemed to be delicate, I 
did not venture to intrude farther. 

Of course there are clubs and clubs, the 
same as there are people and people. 

What happy memories I have of delightful 
intercourse under the roofs of the women's 
club-houses of America, where I was enfolded 
by the warm comradeship of innumerable 
dear women with whom I had much in com- 
mon! 

What impressed me most was that they 
regarded their club as a secondary home, 
which was entitled to claim their interest 
and their personal supervision or rather par- 
ticipation in its communal life. Is this one 
of the articles of constitution in the women's 
clubs of America? 



As Others See Her 91 

Never m any single Instance did I find it 
regarded, as with us, as a mere convenience, 
or a makeshift, used oftenest by those who 
for some reason or another find home life 
disappointing. 

I found the club women of America keen, 
not only in war work, but regarding most of 
the national questions, more especially suf- 
frage. They were very kind to me; even for- 
giving, or at least excusing the feebleness of 
interest in women's suffrage. 

"What! A woman like you not to be on 
the right side.^ What a loss!" they would say. 

But whether a loss to me or to the Cause 
they did not specify. 

One of my most delightful experiences of 
club life met me in a little agricultural town 
on the far edge of New York State. 

I had travelled all night from the West 
and arrived at a little railroad junction at 
the discouraging hour of 9 a.m. I was met 
there by a woman about my own age, in 



92 As Others See Her 

charge of her own motor car, in which she 
conveyed me by a series of rapid movements 
over the worst roads in the world to our 
destination, her own comfortable farmhouse, 
on the outskirts of the little town where I 
was to speak on food conservation to the 
members of the women's club. 

One of the delightful features of that 
amazing journey through America in war 
time, and one which specially appealed to 
my imagination, was the sublime uncer- 
tainty as to what might happen next. 

It might be a millionaire's house one 
should alight at, or a shack on the edge of 
some vast wilderness, or, again, one of those 
dubious little Western hotels so conspicu- 
ously furnished with cuspidors, and some- 
times very little else. I used to wonder what 
was the mentality, the business, and the 
final destination, if any, of the large numbers 
of men who sat in armchairs in the halls of 
these hotels, with their feet up on the window 
sill, or the bar of another chair, wrapped in 



As Others See Her 93 

silence and the profoundest gloom. Some- 
times they had their hats on, drawn closely- 
over their brows, and would appear to be 
asleep. Then suddenly one would arise and 
dash away somewhere, presumably for re- 
freshment, and another would take his place. 
They were, generally speaking, youngish- 
looking men with alert, keen faces. Being 
informed that they were business men wait- 
ing for appointments, I wondered how, 
where, and to what end these appointments 
came off. 

The travel adventure on this particular 
morning brought me to a purely agricult- 
ural district where the meeting would be 
largely composed of farmers and their wives 
interested in food production as well as its 
consumption. 

It was a raw, cheerless-looking morning, 
but a sudden breath of real spring air had 
banished the greater part of the snow and 
unloosed the freshets. 



94 ^s Others See Her 

The "dirt roads" of America in spring are 
indescribable, but they have no terror for 
Henry Ford, who successfully and cheerfully 
negotiates every obstacle. 

My hostess, unperturbed, calmly efficient, 
guided Henry through the freshets, apologiz- 
ing cheerfully for the showers of water sent 
flying over the axles and plentifully be- 
spattering us. At the close of this hectic joy- 
ride, we alighted at a neat, inviting-looking 
frame house which received us with the 
gentle, pervasive, comforting warmth which 
so often fills with envy those who have ex- 
isted in only partial warmth all their lives. 

I was interested to find in this house no 
help of any kind, but just a capable, ener- 
getic, altogether delightful housewife, for 
whom every-day domestic duties had no 
terror. She not only did all her own work, 
managing to present a cheerful, matter-of- 
fact front, but she had time and to spare for 
intellectual pursuits. The living-room had 
its full complement of up-to-date books and 



As Others See Her 95 

current magazines, and there was no hint of 
poverty of soul in the conversation that 
ensued. Seldom have I come up against a 
keener, more alert intelligence. She was a 
keen suffragist, but though disappointed to 
discover that my interest in that knotty 
problem was rather lukewarm, she did not 
suffer it to interfere with our enjoyment of 
that fruitful hour. 

As I regarded her swinging to and fro in 
her roomy rocker, serene, thoughtful, finely 
poised, her pretty grey hair softening the 
somewhat severe outline of her face, I tried 
to picture a farmhouse of the same status in 
my own country, receiving what she frankly 
admitted had appeared a formidable because 
quite unknown guest, from the other side of 
the world, at nine o'clock in the morning. 
And that in a house where there was no help 
of any kind! I have a pretty good imagina- 
tion, but I could not picture such a scene in 
any farmhouse known to me in England. 
There would have been dismay, much tra- 



g6 As Others See Her 

vail of soul, and a conveyed sense of effort, 
which would have taken the fine edge off 
hospitality. The heart would be just as kind 
and hospitable, but the method would be 
more cumbersome. 

After about an hour's comradely talk my 
hostess jumped up and said: — 

*'I would like you to visit with me in the 
kitchen. I've got to get our dinner ready." 

This was a great compliment of which I 
was both conscious and proud. We retired to 
the kitchen where, over the mysteries of 
chicken salad and casserole cooking, we 
achieved a quite new comradeship of a 
particularly intimate kind. 

It was an entirely happy morning, and 
prepared us for a successful afternoon meet- 
ing perhaps better than anything else could 
have done. 

At twelve the man of the house appeared. 
We ate our good dinner with much appetite, 
and after washing up, retired to the meeting, 
assisted thither by the invincible Henry 



As Others See Her 97 

Ford. I only found then that she was the 
president of the women's club and chairman 
of the meeting. She made an excellent speech, 
though I was somewhat nonplussed by her 
relation of the events of the morning, even 
down to what appeared to her its most 
amazing feature — that she had been able to 
ask me to visit with her in the kitchen ! The 
surprise and naivete with which this an- 
nouncement was received threw an odd little 
sidelight on the American woman's concep- 
tion of her English sister. 

"Parlour company" is the epithet they 
apply to us. That we are regarded as cold, 
aloof, difficult to know, is rather a pitiful 
comment on our travel record, isn't it? I did 
my best to dispel it, and in two back blocks 
at least was conscious of success. 

I have related this experience, one of the 
pleasantest in my recollection, because my 
hostess seemed to me typical of the club 
woman at her best. 

Also I received there an object lesson of 



98 As Others See Her 

the value of the Woman's Club in a purely 
rural district; how much it does towards 
compensating the women for the loss of 
town privileges. It provides a centre for their 
activities and a pivot for their interests such 
as we do not possess, yet desperately need, 
in rural England. 



vm 

IF HEALTHY rivalry is to be accepted as 
a token of virility, ambition, and progress, 
America is easily the most virile, ambitious, 
and progressive country in the world. Na- 
tional pride is indeed sometimes in danger of 
being eclipsed by pride of State, city, or 
community. It is a very fierce and jealous 
emotion which brooks no question. Beyond 
doubt it makes for efficiency. 

The noble rivalry displayed by the Red 
Cross chapters, their frantic endeavours to 
outstrip other cities and communities, made 
my first introduction to an outstanding 
American trait. 

There is much drawing of comparisons, 
and not always a too scrupulous regard to 
dimensions. The aim is to excel, to get ahead 
of the other fellow, to be "on time," no 
matter at what cost. With a sigh I have to 
admit that it makes for tremendous effi- 
ciency, but one has to have years ahead 



lOO As Others See Her 

instead of behind to enter into full partner- 
ship or appreciation. 

The strongest and fiercest rivalry Is that 
between East and West. 

"East Is East, and West Is West, and 
never the twain shall meet," sang the poet 
of all nations. But in America they do meet 
sometimes, in the great game of competition; 
then the fun begins. 

The East, secure in her traditions, her 
older culture, her established forms, has but 
a tolerant forbearance for the noisier, more 
hustling West, not yet socially or Intellect- 
ually out of her swaddling clothes. 

The West, on the other hand, has her own 
strong contempt for the airs the East gives 
herself. The rivalry between the cities is of 
a very virulent type. In Boston they will 
assure you solemnly that New York is not 
America, and that it is highly misleading to 
allow one's thoughts to be coloured by the 
cosmopolitanism of the dumping-ground for 
every nationality on earth. 



As Others See Her loi 

"This IS the real America, here in Boston," 
they seem to say by their very air. "Come 
and sit at our feet." 

New York smiles at Bostonian pretensions 
much as one might smile at the gambols of 
an elderly and dowdy aunt. 

All this, displayed with the most charm- 
ing frankness for the delectation of the 
stranger. Is Immensely entertaining, and 
provocative of much reflection. 

I never quite got the "Inwardness" of It, 
as we say In Scotland. Surely cities must 
Inevitably differ like human beings In char- 
acter and attributes, there being something 
to admire in all. 

But they will not have it like that. It Is 
too milk-and-waterish. 

You have to deliver a pronouncement one 
way or other, and accept judgment accord- 
ingly. They have no use for the universal 
lover who worships at countless shrines. 
After my first experience of New York, she 
must remain for me a wonder-city of dream 



I02 As Others See II er 

and fancy, shirred by sordid reality. None 
will ever break the spell of her. To the end I 
shall thrill when my feet press her pave- 
ments, my pulses must tingle at sight of her 
fantastic silhouettes against the sky. . 

But Boston I quickly learned to love. 
Nay, learning was not needed. There is a 
difference when the traveller's way is pre- 
pared. I should like to set down here and now 
the names of the dear people who made it 
their business to see that I loved Boston. 
I certainly felt at home in the city from the 
moment I set foot in it. The individual charm 
of Boston makes special appeal to any visitor 
from the Old Country. There is something 
in her very air and disposition which in- 
stantaneously grips the imagination. 

The noble sweep of the Charles River bears 
on its bosom endless galleons of memory and 
of promise. The narrow, historic streets have 
naught to do with the pretentious sweep of 
wide boulevards, yet lose nothing by com- 
parison. The Common is redolent of the 



As Others See Her 103 

fragrant comradeship of noble minds, and the 
stately homes on the Back Bay, the fine sub- 
urbs losing themselves in flourishing individ- 
ual communities, have a rich and settled air. 

But the essence which sets Boston apart, 
and provides endless quip for envious jest, is 
her conservatism, of the rich, fruity, unas- 
sailable kind with which we are so abundantly 
familiar in England. 

One afternoon at a party given by the 
Colonial Dames I found myself in an atmos- 
phere which had naught to do with the New 
World. I felt like rubbing my eyes more than 
once and asking myself where I was. One 
sensed something rare, remote, graciously 
condescending, and felt that an honour of 
the most signal kind had been conferred by 
the invitation. Colonial Dames! Could there 
be a title more suggestive of dignity, of that 
aloofness which cannot and will not be im- 
posed upon.^ 

Their demeanour did honour to their tra- 
ditions. One thrilled to hear them address 



I04 As Others See Her 

one another by their Christian names, feel- 
ing that they ought all to have titles, not 
conferred, but hereditary, which they would 
wear with a regal air. 

The prelude to the party was a screen 
lecture on Old-World gardens, a wholly 
admirable and fitting theme for the occasion. 
Most of those present had withdrawn them- 
selves for a brief space from strenuous war 
work to enjoy the leisure and beauty of their 
own pleasaunce. Immediately I felt myself 
transplanted to the mediaeval town in which 
I live, felt my feet on the rim of the magic 
carpet. 

Over one interested in the literary life, 
Boston casts a complete spell. How often in 
the throes of continuous war meetings, I 
longed for a little leisure to imbibe the 
delicate flavour, to wander over classic 
ground in Boston and Cambridge, to meet 
in more leisurely and intimate communion 
those who were cherishing, even amid the 
clash of worlds, a priceless heritage. 



As Others See Her 105 

Occasional precious glimpses only was I 
vouchsafed, mere tit-bits to a hungry souL' 
Thus I heard quite by accident from the dear 
woman who entertained Rupert Brooke on 
his visit to Cambridge, that the only thing 
she could remember about him was how 
beautiful he was! 

Yes, surely Boston has every right to 
be proud, with a great pride, and her 
lovers all over the world, some envious 
of her heritage, will continue to lay homage 
at her feet. 

But there are other cities in America! 

I see yet the puzzled, almost shocked, air 
with which they received my glowing praise 
of Pittsburgh. 

Pittsburgh? Oh, yes, excellent, of course, a 
flourishing city, heart of the steel industry, 
and all that; but why Pittsburgh? Why not 
rather Philadelphia ? 

Could any one of free choice live in 
Pittsburgh? Yes, I could, and revel in the 
choice. Perhaps its natural beauty ap- 



io6 As Others See Her 

pealed to me first, though I have never 
met any one else who had been struck by 
its beauty. 

Possibly it is because Pennsylvania has 
many features resembling those in Scotland 
that I admired it so much. The wooded 
heights and rolling uplands, the rapid rivers, 
which seemed to gurgle as they flowed, and 
had no sluggishness about them, the cy- 
presses and the pines silhouetted against the 
mist-green of spring foliage, combined to 
make a picture I shall never forget, nor wish 
to forget. Pittsburgh, riding proudly on her 
seven hills clustering above the flow of her 
noble rivers, the great valley alive with 
mighty steel mills, created an indelible and 
moving picture of the nobility and dignity 
1 of industry. 

She suffers as Ireland does from her 
^absentees, and the marble palaces of her 
magnates are, with few exceptions, unten- 
anted. 

But she gets along merrily, a vast hive of 



As Others See Her 107 

untiring and apparently contented industry. 
In the course of my work I had to visit by 
motor many little outlying towns in the 
Allegheny valley and thus came in close 
touch with the living forces of Pennsylvania 
which have done so much to make America 
great. Again and again one had driven home 
the spectacle of alien races living together 
in complete harmony under one flag, the flag 
of freedom and brotherhood. Sometimes the 
swarthy faces of these working-class audi- 
ences moved me so deeply that I had some 
difficulty in commanding my voice. When 
one feels like that, it is easy to reach the 
heart. By some subtle yet quite natural 
process sympathy, comradeship, and con- 
fidence are established, and the message 
cannot fail. 

At the close of one of the meetings, at a 
busy little town about twenty miles from 
Pittsburgh, a man in workman's garb came 
up, and somewhat shyly drew a sheaf of 
dollar-bills from his pocket. 



io8 As Others See Her 

"What are they for?" I asked. "I did not 
make an appeal for money." 

"They're for the folks you've been tellin' 
us about, ma'm," he said quietly. "The folks 
away back home, that have n't all they need 
to eat, 'specially the kiddies." 

To these people a war four thousand miles 
away was necessarily a shadowy affair. 
Once convinced of its actuality, they needed 
no pressure to make them help. Nay, they 
were instantly eager. In Scotland we have 
the proverb, "We're a' John Tamson's 
bairns." 

I was so often reminded of it among these 
eager, warm-hearted people of varying na- 
tionalities; no big human appeal based on 
the verities of life will ever fail to reach the 
spot, provided it is shorn of self-seeking and 
ulterior motive. All along the valley, there, 
as we swung back on our wonderful night 
rides, watching the millions of lights illu- 
minating the dark places till they looked 
like fairyland, I was conscious, not so much 



As Others See Her. 109 

of the might nor the dignity, nor even the 
romance of Labour, though all were present, 
but rather of the great, pulsing heart of 
humanity, which everywhere beats true to 
God-implanted impulses. When it does not, 
there has been some gross injustice or per- 
version, and the revolt is against man-made 
systems. 

At Pittsburgh I beheld a striking example 
of the tireless and wonderful organized war 
activity of American women. To inaugurate 
what I believe was the Third Liberty Loan 
a monster procession was organized; fifty 
thousand women representing every class of 
work and calling; walked in it, mostly 
dressed in white. Many other processions 
of a like kind had been organized in other 
cities, but Pittsburgh assured me she had 
topped them all. I could easily believe it, 
but had no ocular demonstration of the 
claims of others to that proud distinction. 

It was in Pennsylvania one evening at a 
dinner table that I came into intimate con- 



no As Others See Her 

verse with the German-born American, abso- 
lutely loyal to the country of his adoption, a 
personality whose type is distrusted and dis- 
credited by those who have not come in 
personal contact with it. 

They were comparatively young people, 
attractive to look at, and had been very 
active getting up the food conservation meet- 
ing. While we were discussing the war situa- 
tion, the lady suddenly remarked : — 

"I think we ought to tell you that we are 
pure-bred Germans." 

Slightly taken aback, I observed rather 
quickly: — 

"But absolutely loyal to the great Cause, 
else surely I should not be sitting by invita- 
tion at this table?" 

Then the husband spoke. It would not be 
possible to set down one half of the impetu- 
ous stream which rushed from his lips. He 
spoke In impassioned tones, wholly con- 
vincing, of the lost soul of Germany — of his 
own people, his father and grandfather, 



As Others See Her iii 

lovely, gentle souls, who seeing what was 
coming had torn themselves away from Ger- 
many to escape the curse gradually poison- 
ing the life of the nation. These people seemed 
ten times more loyal than pure-bred Ameri- 
cans; at least their passion showed itself 
more freely. Having tasted both freedom and 
the slavery in countries where men are not 
free-born, they have ground for the faith 
that is in them. 

I met many such people in America, and 
the women were even more pronounced in 
their loyal passion than the men. How knowl- 
edge of their existence must have tortured 
and pursued the dreams of the Kaiser 
who had counted on their loyalty to him! 

One cannot doubt, however, that they are ' 
in the minority. There were thousands of 
German-Americans who for personal reasons '» 
veiled their real sentiments towards the ' 
war by a display of patriotism that had no 
real foundation. 

In the Middle West, I encountered some 



112 As Others See Her 

very hostile areas, even one little township 
where the German landlord of the only hotel 
had no room for the travelling English- 
woman, though his hotel was empty! 

Such experiences, which one might easily 
multiply, brought home the vast network 
of conflicting forces which make up America 
and complicate legislation and nationaliza- 
tion. 

The Middle West stands out like a clear- 
cut cameo in my gallery of remembrance. In 
a sense it interested me perhaps more than 
any other part of the country. It is individual 
and apart in a quite strong, conscious way, 
not loud-mouthed or assertive, but simply 
fully aware of its power and its destiny. 

From various remarks and criticisms heard 
in the East I seemed to sense a slight un- 
easiness regarding the growing prestige of 
the Middle West. It is creating rapidly a 
standard of life which is going to matter, 
and which will ultimately influence the 
whole life of the nation. 



As Others See Her 113 

One felt the pulse of material power in 
the great, vivid, progressive cities and the 
steady growth of a finer standard in quieter 
places, even out to the foothills of the 
Rockies. 

In St. Paul I was entertained in a house 
containing the finest private library I had 
met in America. I do not mean to say that 
It possessed the largest number of expensive 
books, or rare editions, but it was a real book- 
lover's library. The people lived among the 
books, loved every one of them, had dear 
and intimate friends among the great minds 
of all the ages. 

Then the finest artistic flavour was revealed 
to me in a simple ranch-house in Montana, 
a hundred miles from any centre of civiliza- 
tion. 

Involuntarily the question. What is civil- 
ization? springs from the heart to the lips. 
Somebody must write a book about it. 
The war having upset most of the accredited 
systems and standards, the time would 



114 As Others See Her 

seem to be ripe for a new evangel or at least 
a new pronouncement. 

The pulse of life beats strong and free in 
the Middle West. Again and again something 
in its current reminded me of Stevenson's 
"winds austere and pure." 

The Middle West occasionally smiles at 
the heavy patronage and tolerance be- 
stowed upon her by the East. She can 
afford to smile and to wait, knowing what 
wonderful things come to those who wait. 
Her self-sufficiency, strong without being 
offensive, is a different quality from the 
indolent superiority of the South, which 
claims to be the aristocrat among the States. 

The South was like a story-book to me, 
and in no way had the sense of virile reality 
which one felt in the West. I admired the 
Southern grace, its remoteness and in- 
difference to the strain and stress of life as 
feverishly endured by others. Their pride 
of long descent equals, nay, excels. New 
England conservatism. 



As Others See Her iij 

"You can always tell a Southern woman 
by her walk and her soft voice and the poise 
of her head," they told me. 

But It was from the Middle West came 
the neat bon mot: 

"You can always tell a Boston woman — 
but you '_ can't tell her much — " 



IX 

I HAD a fellow passenger on the out- 
going steamer for whom the submarine 
had no terrors. His air of complete boredom 
during the daily boat drill, his indifference 
towards all ordered precautions for our 
safety, filled the heart of this trembling 
sinner with admiration and wonder, though 
it did not meet with the approbation of the 
authorities. 

Asking for an explanation . one day, he 
replied with a certain airy assurance: — 

"Nothing will happen to this ship while I 
am on board." 

No elucidation of this cryptic saying being 
forthcoming, I evolved from a brilliant 
imagination the suspicion that he might be 
in league with the sea pirates, a very glaring 
libel on a wholly inoffensive and loyal 
Englishman. When I learned a day or two 
later that he was a Christian Scientist, his 
assurance was fully explained. The basis of 



As Others See Her 117 

the Christian Science faith appears to be 
that things are not what they seem. 

X had heard of it as a cure for many ills 
and the creator of certain others; this was 
my first direct contact with Its operations 
in the secret recesses of the human soul. 

Aware that America is the cradle of 
Christian Science, I was disposed to ask my 
new and interesting friend a good many 
questions. But he was not so frankly dis- 
posed to answer them. A little later I dis- 
covered this odd evasiveness to be an out- 
standing characteristic of all who practise 
Christian Science. Perhaps it partially ex- 
plains its hold on a certain cast of mind. 

Do we ever prize or cherish what we fully 
understand with the same degree of in- 
tensity as we pursue that which lies ahead, 
out of our reach, existing possibly only in 
the realms of pure imagination? 

In New York I had an opportunity, which 
I considered a privilege, of hearing my 
fellow passenger lecture on Christian Science 



Ii8 As Others See Her 

to a congregation of over two thousand 
persons, in a large uptown church. He took 
me there himself and introduced me to one 
or two members of the congregation waiting 
with great enthusiasm in the anteroom to 
welcome him back to his work in America. 

Ever eager for information and enlighten- 
ment, especially regarding the conduct of 
life, I gave to the lecturer close, unmitigated 
attention, which hardly ever wavered, for 
an hour and a quarter. When he appeared 
on the rostrum accompanied by a lady in 
full evening dress, officially termed a reader, 
every eye was turned upon him with ap- 
proval and expectation. He certainly made 
a pleasing figure, immaculately dressed and 
with a quiet air of assurance of which, being 
a nervous person myself on a platform, I felt 
distinctly envious. 

During the brief interval before he ap- 
peared I made some study of the faces of the 
audience. That they had gathered there for 
a serious purpose was evidenced by their air 



As Others See Her 119 

of cheerful expectation. It was a universal 
expression; beyond doubt they had for the 
moment laid aside the fret and fever of life 
and come to have the bread broken to them, 
with full expectation that they would not be 
sent empty away. 

They looked like solid, middle-class people, 
and were of all ages. 

In spite of my conscientious concentra- 
tion, I had great difficulty in following the 
lecturer. In fact, I may as well confess that 
I did not know what he was talking about. 
His voice, a pleasant monotone of excellent 
quality, was seldom raised, or thrilled by the 
passion which we usually associate with 
deeply felt problems of the soul-life of man. 

It was a reasoned discourse, for those who 
had the key, and he completely riveted the 
attention of his hearers. The stillness was 
profound and not an eye wandered from his 
face. Principle and God were the two words 
which oftenest occurred, but they did not 
seem to me to lead anywhere and the 



I20 As Others See Her 

secret of his hold over that great audience 
must remain a profound mystery. They were 
undoubtedly being fed from some secret 
spring, while I hungered and thirsted on the 
outside. 

He closed on the same "rigid monotone, 
and there was no thrill of reaction, but 
rather a quiet settling back In the pews, a 
little flutter of satisfaction, an exchange of 
glances which, had a word been required to 
express it, would have been found In 
*' Wonderful!" I turned to the woman at 
my side and asked whether she could tell 
me what It was all about, and sum up the 
Christian Science faith In a few simple words. 

She shook her head murmuring, "Read 
Mrs. Eddy's book." 

In the car returning to the hotel, I put 
the same question to the lecturer and re- 
ceived the same cryptic reply, "Read Mrs. 
Eddy's book." 

It seemed to be the only accredited reply 
to any questioner. I certainly heard it from 



As Others See Her 121 

countless lips. I got the book and tried 
honestly to understand It, but without suc- 
cess. I am still wondering what was Mrs. 
Eddy's secret. How has that simple though 
astute woman been able to Influence so many 
millions of her fellow beings '^, 

That It has been an uplifting Influence few 
will seek to deny. Men and women have 
been raised from the depths by It, and set 
once more on the pinnacle of self-respect. It 
gives a most complete assurance. There Is 
no room for doubt. Once able to accept or 
grasp the tenets of her creed, then all's well 
with this world, and the next. There do not 
seem to be any doubting Thomases In the 
Christian Science camp. But there seemed 
to me to be very little joy or radiance about 
it all. Surely we need joy In a joyless world. 

The Frenchman who said that England 
had twenty-seven religions and only one 
sauce, would need to think up a new hon 
mot to describe the religious life of America. 
It was our denominations he was criticizing, 



122 As Others See Her 

but in America he would have to deal with 
religions. I have often pondered on this 
curious and interesting psychological de- 
velopment of a great nation, and asked my- 
self what will be America's outstanding 
faith when she shall have reached the 
zenith of her power. 

Meanwhile she is the prey of religion- 
mongers. Everywhere one comes up with 
new sects, beliefs, cults, not all of which 
can be dignified with the name of religion 
or of faith. 

I lived for a space in a delightful house 
at Washington where the husband and wife 
were disciples of the New Thought. The 
moment one entered that house one was 
conscious of something helpful and comfort- 
ing. It emanated like a subtle aroma from 
those who lived in it. They were instant in 
service for others, doing good by stealth in 
the most wonderful way. I have never seen 
such a helping of lame dogs over stiles. It 
seemed to be the litany of their lovely lives. 



As Others See Her 123 

They told me how the New Thought had 
uplifted them, giving physical health and 
mental well-being for weakness and dis- 
couragement, and full confidence for self- 
consciousness. They were not reticent like 
the Christian Scientists, but eager to pass 
their prescription on. Their secret was the 
assurance of Divine Power within, and they 
obtained their inspiration from the Script- 
ures, aided by sundry helpful little manuals 
published from the headquarters of the New 
Thought. Their creed of life was elimination 
of doubt and fear, undoubtedly two of the 
basest passions which embitter life and 
paralyze achievement. 

Naturally a doubting Thomas from my 
youth up, having reached serener air 
through much tribulation and by long, 
tortuous ways, I had envy of these disciples 
who with such apparent ease had reached 
the heights of full assurance, and there re- 
mained unassailable and undismayed. While 
Christian Science remains a sealed book to 



124 ^^ Others See Her 

me and one which does not greatly tempt 
me to its pages, there seemed to me in the 
New Thought something with which all 
could have kinship and sympathy. What 
talks we had over it! But it requires much 
concentration from its devotees, and more 
withdrawal from the fret and fever of life 
than I shall ever attain on this side. 

"Come ye apart," is an injunction that I 
have had to regard as a privilege ex- 
clusively reserved for others. 

Yet in hurrying crowds, amid the stress 
and the din of battle, I have been comforted 
by a secret strain, some echo of the choir 
Invisible. 

Perhaps the strenuous worker has his own 
compensations. With him, if he truly seek 
it, may abide forever the melody of the ever- 
lasting chime. 

Deeply, enthrallingly interested in what- 
ever medium through which the need of the 
human soul seeks to find expression, I am 
not the stuff of which converts are made. A 



As Others See Her 125 

sturdy, somewhat austere, Presbyterianism, 
handed down through a long line of godly 
forbears, has coloured and informed my 
whole life, and is likely to remain my shield 
and buckler to the end. 

All these phases of universal seeking for 
a strong house of defence against the ills of 
this life and the possible adventures of the 
next fill one with an Immense, almost a 
divine compassion. 

They go such a long way round to garner 
experience, seeking for happiness, which is 
humanity's eternal quest, outside the portals 
of the distant and the dim, whereas it dwells 
with us in the very house of life itself, the 
key, where the Lord Christ himself left it, 
on the homeliest doorstep. 

Simple, childlike souls thus achieve the 
radiance for which the scholars have been 
searching throughout the ages. It falls like 
a benediction on the heart attuned by 
simple faith and service to the music of the 
spheres. 



126 As Others See Her 

The exigencies of my work prevented my 
making even the most casual study of the 
church life in America, so that I could draw 
no comparison between it and that existing 
m my own country. 

I was often speaking myself on Sundays, 
oftener still making interminable railway 
journeys to reach remote destinations, but 
I found everywhere a profound reverence for 
religious faith, and a most pathetic and al- 
most universal seeking for more light. This 
profoundly significant trait was revealed to 
me at every gathering I addressed. Part of 
my programme, quite distinct and apart 
from the oflficial one, was to make a spir- 
itual appeal at the end of my address. 

This was not done for effect, but simply 
and solely because it is impossible for me to 
separate the spiritual element from human 
affairs. To insist on such separation, is to 
court disaster and defeat. The spiritual 
element cannot be eliminated from the life 
of man. Man-made treaties have to be based 



As Others See Her 127 

on Divine law, promoted and ratified by 
Divine approval before they can operate 
for the people's good. 

In America more than any other country, 
the spiritual appeal, sincerely made and felt 
by the speaker, will never fail. No matter 
what the nature of the audience — and I 
had many strange and hostile ones — that 
part of my message never failed to arrest 
and impress. It interested and moved me 
profoundly and gave a peculiar joy to the 
work, such as I have never felt elsewhere. 
American audiences, though they do not 
cheer a speaker much, are far more emotional, 
and it therefore requires less courage to make 
the direct spiritual appeal. I record this in- 
disputable fact with gratitude. 

They are not ashamed of showing feeling 
as we are in England. I have often wondered 
how the stolid British audience affects 
American orators. This American character- 
istic has nothing in common with the tearful 
emotion exhibited by the negro, for instance, 



128 As Others See Her 

whose religion is a mere ecstasy with very 
little bearing on his conduct of life. 

I wonder what effect this emotionalism 
has on ordinary affairs, whether it enters at 
all into business relations? One has heard 
American business methods described as the 
keenest on earth, but I don't see how this 
peculiar trait can be altogether eliminated. 
Because the human element in business is 
the one that counts always. 

I shall never forget while I live the pro- 
found effect made on me at Washington by 
the spectacle of a body of hard-headed busi- 
ness men, representing part of the best 
brains In the country, moved to tears by a 
simple appeal I made to them for their co- 
operation to help England out of her food 
hardship and peril. 

I could not conceive of such a thing 
happening in England. They might prob- 
ably feel as much, but they would rather 
die than show it. 

What will be the ultimate effect of this 



As Others See Her 129 

very wide racial difference between units of 
the English-speaking nations? It is a fas- 
cinating theme, on which one might enlarge 
indefinitely. 

There can be no doubt that it is our 
national reserve, carried to almost indecent 
lengths, which has militated, and is militat- 
ing now, very strongly against the full under- 
standing so ardently sought for by those who 
are fully awake to its supreme importance. 

Our coldness repels them. I had con- 
siderable sympathy with the American sol- 
dier who remarked to me, rather indignantly, 
one afternoon as we stood together on the 
deck of an homewardbound troop ship: — 

"The Englishman may be a very good 
chap, as you say, but I've no use for him. 
Why should I, or any other fellow, waste 
good time digging him out of his hole? Let 
him come out and show himself a white man, 
and he'll find us the same. I've no use for a 
chap who says no when he means yes, and can 
hop along without even a bit of a smile." 



130 As Others See Her 

One was conscious of some bitterness 
there, possibly born of a personal experience, 
but the incident serves to show how prej- 
udice may be innocently and quite un- 
intentionally created. And prejudice once 
rooted is difficult to uproot. It takes a severe 
surgical operation. 

The only possible way of clearing up these 
discouraging mists which undoubtedly are 
retarding the dawn of full understanding, is 
to promote endless traffic across the divid- 
ing seas. You must come more and more to 
our shores, and we to yours, not as mere 
casual guests in the vast caravansaries 
where only false or at least partial views 
are obtained, but as welcome guests in one 
another's homes. 

The Anglo-American Union will have to 
bestir itself, and become a vast and vital- 
izing force. Upon that force, and the final 
fusion of the English-speaking peoples, the 
future of the world depends. 



E 



X 

AST evening I presided at a lecture on 



House Building and Town Planning," 
delivered by an expert under one of our new 
reconstruction schemes. It was easy to see 
that his laborious outline of the ideal house 
set in the ideal town appeared merely a 
Utopian scheme to his audience. 

Reflecting on what the scheme must have 
cost in committees, reports, and recom- 
mendations, I longed to invite them to a 
night ride across the Atlantic in an aero- 
plane, to a country where concrete examples 
of what he was talking about could be found 
outlining any board walk. 

British posterity would require to find 
considerable consolation in pride of ancestry, 
because undoubtedly there has been handed 
down to us a heavy legacy of difficult, some- 
times impossible living conditions. Pride of 
long descent may stiffen the back, but it 
won't keep it warm in winter, nor yet 



132 As Others See Her 

protect any of us from the consequences of 
openly defying the laws of health. 

The complete absence of any system in 
ancient town planning no doubt gave a 
pleasing and artistic Irregularity to the out- 
line of our mediaeval towns, but the fact 
remains that many of them are insanitary 
and fertile hotbeds of discomfort and disease. 
:> I have lived in many varieties of houses in 
Scotland and England, and have had prac- 
tical experience of both new and old styles 
of architecture. Artists and lovers of the 
antique may go into raptures over the 
beauty of Elizabethan roofs and eaves, or 
the clean, fine lines of Queen Anne panelling, 
point enthusiastically to the quaintness of 
low doorways and projecting windows, but 
when you have to live intimately with 
windows which refuse to open at the top 
because they were not fashioned to open 
that way, if at all, and when the green mil- 
dew in your clothes and boot cupboards 
convinces you of the sad fact that your 



As Others See Her 133 

abode has been constructed minus a damp- 
proof course, the artistic side of things 
ceases to charm, except on rare occasions. 

You live in perpetual warfare with hostile 
forces militating against the health and 
well-being of yourself and your household, 
and that Is a distinct check on artistic 
leanings. I crossed the Atlantic in mid- 
winter in a somewhat chastened mood 
regarding our climate, which had been 
behaving so much worse than usual that 
even the war, provisional excuse for many 
shortcomings, could not palliate it. It was 
therefore very easy, nay, inevitable, that I 
should fall in love at once and permanently 
with American houses. 

If I were offered a handsome sum for an 
adverse criticism, I should have to refuse it. 
The only possible flaw in their construction, 
from my point of view, would be the ab- 
sence of privacy conferred by doors per- 
petually open, or non-existent. But living 
in the open is, after all, only a matter of 



134 ^^ Others See Her 

habit. I could with ease shed all my prejudice 
against it, though I have lived for over half 
a century in a country where a man's house 
IS his castle, to which he alone possesses the 
key. 

In these castles, great and small, we live 
furtively, as if cherishing a secret dread of 
inspection or even friendly intervention by 
our neighbours. And we are very particular 
about doors shutting firmly, and having 
keys to them. Lots of keys! Some of us even 
train our cats and dogs to shut the doors. 

The lightness of the domestic duties in 
your wonderful labour-saving houses partly 
explains how America has come to be re- 
garded in other parts of the world as woman's 
special paradise. In England women are 
perpetually at war in their houses against 
cold and draughts, and are seldom or never 
warm all over at one time. Occasionally we 
achieve, at great cost and much travail of 
body, a kind of sectional warmth which has 
to do duty for the real. 



As Others See Her 135 

When we live in old houses we forget to 
be proud of their antiquity, because we are 
so busy stuffing up cracks and fissures to 
exclude draughts, or inventing new wind- 
screens, which in some houses are as much a 
necessity as on motor cars. We pile up coal 
and wood, and watch it blaze away cheer- 
fully in our wide and artistically beautiful 
fireplaces, mournfully assured that both 
heat and flames will exhaust themselves in 
trying to warm the chimney instead of the 
room. Draw close to the fender, and you may 
feel the glow, retire a few paces back, and 
you are glad to despatch willing young feet 
to fetch your grandmother's shawl. 

That is how the great majority of us live in 
England in winter, and those who survive 
bear others to carry on. 

I have no sort of false pride about it, nor 
any hesitation in handsomely acknowledg- 
ing that I was physically comfortable and 
warm for a longer time in America than at 
any other period of a long and I trust a 



136 As Others See Her 

comparatively blameless life. I have heard 
Europeans complaining of the overheated 
houses of America, but why complain when 
the remedy Is simple, and always at hand? 

I never found any windows hermetically 
sealed, though I admit In certain hotels 
there was a prejudice, almost malignant in 
its intensity, against opening them. But a 
little firmness always prevailed. How often 
have I, returning tired and chilled from 
some evening meeting, blessed the Inventor 
of universal central heating as I closed my 
bedroom door and sat down comfortably 
to rest, without having to bother about 
stirring up a fire or replenishing It with fuel. 
Then think of the extra wraps it does away 
with! 

One winter day at a London, terminus, 
from whence depart trains for the south 
coast, I watched the spectacle of an elderly 
couple and their belongings getting en- 
trained for their annual seasonal visit. It 
was rather a mirth-provoking sight. 



As Others See Her 137 

They wore stacks of clothing which 
effectively disguised their natural figures 
and converted them Into miniature moving 
1 mountains. A manservant and a lady's-maid 
followed, with additional fur coats and rugs, 
and two hot^water bottles in flannel bags. 
Two pet dogs in red flannel coats, and a 
canary in a cage completed the entourage. 
Think of the trouble, the expense, the 
worry, and the thought Involved even In 
preparation for such a migration! 

I am proud to record the fact that I 
travelled right across America with one 
suit-case and a roomy dressing-bag, one 
fur coat, and a muff, which I lost. Thus 
equipped I travelled fifteen thousand miles 
covering a period of four and a half months, 
and was always turned out respectably In 
neat, workmanlike garb, suitable to the 
occasion. I could not have done It anywhere 
except In America, where the comfort of 
houses, hotels, and trains can be depended 
on. 



138 As Others See Her 

I will not, however, expatiate to any great 
extent on my travelling experiences. They 
would need a small book to themelves. I 
spent about half of my American nights in 
lower berths on the railroads, and not only 
survived the process, but became very agile, 
through much practice, at getting in and out 
of these heathenish bunks, and dressing on 
my hands and knees. 

All I shall say here is that I shall die 
convinced that in spite of their reputation 
for go-aheadness the American people must 
have a strain of angelic long-suffering con- 
cealed about them somewhere. I don't know 
any other kind of people who would have en- 
dured the system so long. 

The initial cost of central heating in houses 
must be considerable, but the actual cost of 
maintenance appears to be much less than 
that demanded by our inadequate methods. 
I enquired of the mistress of a lonely house 
on the edge of a prairie in Iowa, in which, 



As Others See Her 139 

though the outside temperature was ten 
below zero,, I was entirely and delightfully 
comfortable, how much she reckoned that it 
cost to warm their house throughout the 
entire winter. After some computation and 
consultation with the man of the house she 
reckoned that it took eight tons of coal at 
ten dollars per ton. 

I gasped with envy, and mentally shook 
my fist at a kitchen stove with which I had 
lived in intimate but never amicable relations, 
whose capacious maw could and did swallow 
twenty tons of coal per annum for cooking 
purposes alone, only deigning to throw in a 
little hot water for bath purposes when the 
wind happened to be in a direction to suit its 
evil temper. 

I take off! my hat to the American plumber, 
and only wish he would migrate in large 
numbers to this country to teach us how 
to live comfortably and with economy in 
the matter of heating. If we had houses 
arranged and fitted like yours, we should 



I40 As Others See Her 

have no domestic servant problem in Eng- 
land, because very few of us would keep 
servants. 

British women are not afraid of work, but 
we have so many hard and unnecessary tasks 
thrust upon us through our ancestors not 
knowing anything about house-building or 
sanitation, that most of us have gotten dis- 
couraged and willing to hand on the perpetual 
struggle to others. Filling coal scuttles in a 
cellar and carrying them up four or five 
flights of stairs is a discouraging job, even 
for a strong, conscientious, and enthusiastic 
housewife. 

Then think of what happens after the 
contents of the scuttles have been converted 
into partial heat and very impartial dust! 
All the ashes have to be carefully swept up, 
taken out, carried downstairs, and deposited 
in the dustbin, and the room then swept and 
garnished. 

All English housewives wage perpetual 
war against dust and cold, but never against 



As Others See Her 141 

heat. Some of us would welcome that kind of 
warfare as a change. 

I do not find in my vocabulary any words 
adequate to describe American hospitahty 
as it was bestowed on me in every kind of 
home during these strenuous but happy and 
enHghtening months. Everywhere its quality 
was the same, spontaneous, warm-hearted, 
and sincere. You were made welcome in the 
way which makes you glow all over. In a 
word you come home. To a woman like me, 
a home-lover and student of human nature, 
this tremendous privilege was appreciated in 
a way I cannot explain. 

American hospitality Is different from all 
other In the world, but I am not going to 
expatiate on Its psychology. We do not 
dissect the thing we love, but merely take it 
to our bosoms. 

Everything Interested me, your furniture, 
your crockery, the way you set your tables, 
and make your beds, and your graceful 



142 As Others See Her 

wearing of your beautiful clothes. Your food 
I think is on the whole better cooked than 
ours, especially in quite ordinary house- 
holds, but I think you have less variety. I 
was rather struck by the monotony of the 
menus: always excepting salads, the beauty 
and variety of which used to fill me with 
admiration, not unmixed with awe. But I 
never ate any of them. 

Salad-eating is an acquired^ habit, and 
we have not acquired it to any great ex- 
tent in England yet. Let us blame it on 
the climate, as we blame so many other 
things, all the ones we can't otherwise 
explain away. I do fear that in England 
a wisp of chicken salad and an ice-cream 
would be considered an inadequate meal, 
especially for a winter day. But I observed 
that it was a favourite order given in the 
restaurants. 

In Scotland the unregenerate refer to salad 
as "green meat," and one delightful lady of 
the old school politely declined it at a dinner 



As Others See Her 143 

party, explaining that she preferred her 
vegetables boiled. 

I gratefully remember your coffee, surely 
the finest on earth. France cannot excel nor 
even equal it. I shall nevei dare offer any 
of my dear American friends coffee in my 
house. I shall have to get them to acquire the 
tea habit while they are under my roof. 

The pleasant custom one so often meets in 
American houses, of serving a guest's break- 
fast in her room, has much to recommend it, 
both from the viewpoint of the hostess and 
the guest. It gives the latter a delightful 
feeling of freedom and at-home-ness as well 
as the assurance that she is not imposing on 
a busy woman's time. In England bedroom 
breakfasts can be comfortably served only in 
large, well-staffed houses because the kindling 
of fires is involved. A warm atmosphere has 
to be secured before there can be any 
comfort. 

As I pen these lines, the pictures of many 
fair and dear interiors to which I was intro- 



144 -^^ Others See Her 

duced in America rise up before my mental 
vision. The mulberry suite in a precious 
New England home, the solid comfort of the 
guests' quarters in a stately house in the 
Back Bay in Boston, the exquisite colouring 
and luxury in a marble mansion in Pennsyl- 
vania, and the dear, intimate cosiness of a 
little bedroom in a prairie farmhouse in the 
Far West, where you could step out from 
the window to a wide piazza and face the 
loneliness and the benediction of the stars; 
all different, but all informed and vivified 
by the same loving-kindness which at once 
and successfully banished the homesickness 
of the wayfaring woman into the limbo of 

. forgotten things. 

Repay? It never can be repaid. The very 
word is an insult to that royal giving. It can 
only be acknowledged and cherished, as it 
will be by my grateful heart, to the very 

, end of my life. 



XI 

ONE evening in the dining-room of the 
Ritz Carlton Hotel at New York I was 
fascinated by the looks of a woman, dining 
alone with a man, as I was, at a little table 
not far away. I directed the attention of my 
host, a man who knew New York well, and 
asked if he could tell me who she was. She 
seemed to be concentrating entirely on her i 
vis-d-vis, leaning across the table towards 
him with that slightly appealing air which 
the average man finds it hard to resist. She 
was very beautiful In the artificial, modern 
way, and gowned to perfection, with due 
regard to the display of somewhat mature, 
charms. 

My host shrugged his broad shoulders, and 
dropping his eyes went on with his dinner. 

"I know her very well. She's one of the 
women whose business In life Is to understand 
other women's husbands." 



146 As Others See Her 

"Pickers-up of unconsidered trifles. Re- 
ceivers of unappreciated confidences. One of 
the refuges modern civilization provides for 
the great misunderstood," I murmured. "So 
he isn't her property?" 

"Good Lord, no, anything but — and her 
own lawful is quite a decent sort of chap. I 
see you know the type. Does she prevail 
much in England?" 

I replied that I feared she was indigenous 
to every soil. 

From the understander of other women's 
husbands, we drifted into further talk about 
marriage in general and its effect on indi- 
viduals. My host was a widower, but regard- 
ing his matrimonial experience I had no 
knowledge. He was a comparatively young 
man still, and immensely eligible so far as 
the possession of worldly goods went. But 
apparently he had not felt inclined to make a 
second venture, which, in a country where 
second and third and even fourth matri- 
monial ventures are airily trifled with, nat- 



As Others See Her 147 

urally surprised me. As I was very nearly 
old enough to be his mother, I ventured a 
few remarks on a subject which had begun 
morbidly to obsess my thoughts. 

"I'm afraid I don't Hke the attitude of a 
large and apparently increasing section of 
your people towards what old-fashioned 
people still persist in labelling holy matri- 
mony. The canker is eating into the very 
vitals of your country. I saw some figures in 
a newspaper the other day alleging that one 
out of every ten marriages here ends in 
divorce. If these appalling figures are true, 
what are you going to do about it?" 

"What can we do?" he asked gloomily. 
"And it's the women's fault." 

My answer was obvious. 

"It takes two to make a bargain, and the 
men could stop it if they liked. After all, they 
have the last word." 

"Oh, have they, though?" he asked with 
a quick uplift of his level brows. "You 
could n't substantiate that, not in the States 



148 As Others See Her 

anyway, however hard you try. Fact is, our 
women are shirkers — I don't say all of 
them, because if there weren't some saviours 
of the country left in It, why then we 
should n't exist long. I suppose that's what 
it amounts to. 

"But I freely admit that there's a big 
stratum in our social order, where the stand- 
ards are absolutely rotten. The women are 
unmoral, rather than immoral. If they 
weren't, could there be a blot on the land- 
scape like Reno ? My God ! I can't think why 
the Almighty doesn't send down fire from 
Heaven, supposing such a place exists, to 
burn it up." 

I held my breath, for he spoke with pas- 
sion, and I wondered whether he was going 
to touch on the tragedy of his own life. I 
mightily feared it. For it is one thing to 
utter platitudes on things in general, quite 
another to be faced with actual tragedy and 
be asked to deal with it. I've had my share 
of that, and getting too old for the job. 



As Others See Her 149 

Before I could say anything he went on: — 

"I went to the place once to see one of 
my sisters who made a mess of her life. She 
was the loveliest and the best, but she got a 
blighter for a husband. He had his good 
points, however, and If she'd stood to her 
guns and played the game In spite of him, If 
they together had made an honest try of It, 
they might have settled down Into peace 
which can on occasion be a very good sub- 
stitute for happiness. Fact Is, It's too dashed 
easy for us here to get our heads out of the 
noose, — easier than to get 'em in some- 
times." 

"Of course It's all fundamentally and 
dreadfully wrong," I said, looking him 
straight In the face. "*For better for 
worse,' the service says and the vow 's got 
to be taken literally, and stood by, to the 
bitter end." 

"You'd go as far as that?" he asked In 
apparent surprise. 
• "Every step of the way. I'm with the 



150 As Others See Her 

Romans in that; at least, I don't believe in 
divorce." 

"Not even for the major sins?" 

"Not even for the major sins. In business 
honourable firms have to stand by their bad 
bargains as well as the good ones; it's the 
only way the commerce of the world cap be 
held together. Should we be less particular 
about our matrimonial engagements on which 
the future of the race depends? We've got 
all wrong somehow with our marriage stand- 
ard, and you are more wrong in America — 
at least more of you are wrong I should say 
— than anywhere else in the world. But you 
are more open about It." 

"That surely ought n't to be a bad thing. 
But no divorce!" he repeated. "Infidelity, 
drunkenness, cruelty, drug-taking, insanity, 
a ghastly crew, aren't they? You'd make poor 
devils stick any one, or even them all?" 

"You don't cast off a member of your 
family, thrust him or her out of the 
home, because he or she happens to be 



As Others See Her 151 



stricken with a physical disease. You keep 
him there, and try to cure or at least to 
patch him up." 

He stroked his chin reflectively. 

"Yes," he drawled. "But it isn't quite the 
same, is it? Still, there might be something 
in it." He swept the glowing restaurant with 
his eyes, and I gathered that he was making 
some sort of survey or computation. 

"In this room I see five men and six 
women who, between them, have had more 
than thirty matrimonial affairs. See that 
woman in the cyclamen pink frock? She's 
with number four." 

I did not turn my head to regard the 
cyclamen frock. Nostalgia prevented me. 

"I see very little difference between her 
and the woman of the street," I said calmly. 
"A woman who, goaded by infidelity or 
studied cruelty and indifference, cuts herself 
off from her husband, deliberately preferring 
to live her own private life in peace, any one 
can sympathize with and respect. But when 



152 As Others See Her 

it IS simply a choice and variety of men — I 
confess I do not see much difference between 
the cyclamen pinks and the wayside weeds 
who ply their trade on the Great White 
Way." 

"Would you stand by that anywhere in 
public?" he asked, with a curious glint in 
his eyes. 

"I would — If the occasion justified it. I 
have said It In this very country to Intelligent 
women who agreed with me. It Is a betrayal 
of the race, that's what It Is. After all, the 
primal object of marriage Is children, isn't 
It? Where do they come In when they happen 
to have cyclamens for their mothers? I'm 
told there are children in America to-day, 
poor lambs, who don't know where they 
belong." 

"Quite true," he murmured. "I know some 
of 'em myself." 

"Then surely something's got to be done, 
a bar sinister placed on these unholy and 
casual alliances, masquerading as marriage. 



As Others See Her 153 

It's as bad as polygamy; worse, because it 
pretends to be something better." 

"Haven't you got this sort of thing in 
your country at all, then?" 

"Too much of it. During the decade before 
the war there was a steady shirking of 
motherhood and of every kind of responsi- 
bility. One day some years back in London 
where my husband had a large family 
practice, he was counting all the married 
girls in it who ought to have been mothers, 
and were not. There was nothing earthly to 
prevent them because they were all healthy, 
strong young women, perfectly normal in 
every respect. They were just shirkers pure 
and simple, afraid of their figures and of 
having their good time interfered with. 
Spoiled, selfish, pleasure-seeking creatures, 
every one. Of course husbands are not kept 
that way, but apparently they were willing 
to take the risks." 

"Then what happened? Did anybody do 
anything to stop it?" 



154 -^-^ Others See Her 

"The war intervened and altered the 
whole standard of life and thought. People 
were simply forced back to the bedrock of 
things, and the primal instincts of humanity 
are reasserting themselves. It may not be a 
permanent cure, but at least decay has 
been arrested for the time being." 

"You call It decay?" 

"What else is it? It's a lack of virility of 
mind and body. Do you know what has given 
me the biggest heartache since I've been in 
this country? When the women came up at 
the close of the meetings I have addressed, 
which they always did, saying, 'My only 
son is over there.' 'My God!' I said to a 
woman I was staying with one night, 'Is 
America a country of only sons, and are they 
all going over there to be killed? What has 
she done to merit a punishment so awful?'" 

"The war ended too soon for us on that 
count as well as on others," he said gravely. 
"We certainly don't have enough of chil- 
dren. I had three. Two of them are over 



As Others See Her 155 

there, and the other with me in my business; 
no, not married. They don't seem keen on 
marrying. Of course the youngest is only 
twenty-one." 

"But early marriages, even if a certain 
amount of hardship ensues, make for hap- 
piness and the stability of the family life. 
And the more children the better. The hap- 
piest and the best people and the finest 
assets to any country are the members of 
large families. They are prepared there for 
commerce with the world. It is a miniature 
world where the battle is fought and won 
every day. The only child in comparison 
with these brave young warriors hasn't an 
earthly chance In the game of life." 

"I shouldn't wonder but you're right," 
he said, and his sombre eyes seemed to glow. 

"The over-indulgence which can hardly 
be avoided In the one-child family is so bad 
for the child too! Only yesterday in a man's 
office downtown I was witness to an exhibi- 
tion of the most complete selfishness on the 



156 As Others See Her 

part of a daughter I have ever seen in my life. 
That she was a particularly charming daugh- 
ter was merely an aggravation of the offence. 
Her settlement in life had come under dis- 
cussion and she was out to squeeze the last 
cent out of the old man. It was all ap- 
parently that he existed for. When she had 
gone he said to me, 'Now perhaps you 
understand what I meant the other day when 
I told you that in America a man's home is 
his office. He is happier there than anywhere 
else because it is the only place which 
belongs to him.' " 

My host smiled a little bitterly. 

"I've observed that most daughters are 
spoiled. Who can help spoiling them? I'm 
afraid I could n't." 

"I admit that it isn't easy not to, but in 
England to-day we are suffering from the 
complete overthrow of parental authority." 

"My goodness!" he exclaimed. "I thought 
you were the models of all the family virtues 
over there." 



As Others See Her 157 

"Are we? *I hae my doots.' You know I'm 
Scotch, and since I've been In this country- 
nothing has interested me more than the 
cheerful persistence of the Scotch. One finds 
them everywhere, mostly in good billets, 
cheerfully overcoming difficulties, and gen- 
erally making good. They are the best 
pioneers in the world. It's in their blood, 
because they have centuries of real piety 
and hard discipline behind them. I can look 
back to my own young life In my father's 
house where discipline and unquestioning 
obedience to parents was absolute and know 
that it was the soundest basis for life. The 
decline of it In family life marks the begin- 
ning of decline In national greatness. It's 
a business proposition after all. Can inex- 
perience rule experience, dictate policy, in- 
sure solidity or success anywhere? I submit 
that It Is clean Impossible." 

"It's the way of least resistance, Isn't It, 
and poor humanity is too easily disposed that 
way?" 



158 As Others See Her 

"Don't I know it?" I said with a small 
groan. " But do you think honestly now that 
the men and women who shirk the real issues 
of life are happier — well, than you and me, 
who have at least tried to shoulder our 
responsibilities manfully?" 

"Happy, by God, no! I've never come up 
with any real happiness, not since Judy 
died." 

"She wasn't the cyclamen variety," I 
murmured sympathetically. 

"No; she was the good old-fashioned sort. 
Wardsworth described her, don't you know, in 
these lines, I always remember them when I 
think of her: — 

" *A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food.* 

She wasn't above trying to make an ordinary 
chap happy. Yet she died and the cyclamens 
flourish. That's what hurts and confuses, 
see?" 

I did see. I was not able for a moment to 
make any reply. 



As Others See Her 159 

"I say, this sort of talk is bad for digestion. 
You're not eating anything," he said quickly. 

"Oh, yes, I am. It's only bad food that 
forces your attention. This Is the nectar of 
the gods which makes you feel good by 
automatic process. It's a lovely dinner, but, 
yes — I think I've had enough." 

"Oh, no; have something else; say, are 
you going to write up this stuff?" 

I shook my head. 

"I should be afraid. Besides, I haven't 
the right and I'm only a visitor to these 
shores. Has n't it been written up world 
without end over here already? It seems to 
me such a fruitful theme." 

"The comic journals have their fling at 
Reno, but people seem loath to tackle the 
thing seriously. Of course it isn't savoury." 

"It'll have to be faced here and all the 
world over. You're only at the beginning of 
your empire-building and you can't afford 
to have any of the foundation pins rotten or 
even shaky, can you?" 



i6o As Others See Her 

He pushed back his chair and we rose 
simultaneously. As our eyes met, mine were 
full of tears. 

"Forgive me for preaching," I said, "but 
It has done me good." 

A little later as I sat by my window in 
my hotel pondering these things, a mighty 
sadness that was like a pall descended on 
my spirit. 

The sky-signs darting upward like tongues 
of flame obscured the clear message of the 
stars. They seemed symbolic — in tune — 
not with the infinite, but with the finite and 
the earthy, which drags the soul of humanity 
down to darkness and despair. I thought of 
what we had been discussing, the canker 
whose rim we had but skirted, of the prolific 
breeding-grounds on the East Side and in 
every alien and undesirable area, offering 
their full quota to the national life. 

And the best was being wilfully withheld! 
My heart wept for America. She will have to 



As Others See Her i6i 

deal drastically and soon with this canker, 
cut It out fearlessly and forever from, the 
web of her national life. 

There is only one way. Men and women 
"and especially women, since they are the 
leaders in every great moral movement, 
must accept full responsibility for their sex, 
shirking nothing, regarding it as the charge 
God has given them to keep for Him here. 
No other form of service, however noble, 
will palliate neglect of this. 

I remember some years back being called 
to the bedside of a dying woman who was a 
little afraid of the swelling of Jordan. I 
tried to comfort her with reassuring pictures 
of what awaited her on the other side, but 
she continued to shake a doubting head. 

Pressed for some explanation for her con- 
suming fear at last she said: — 

"I haven't done anything, not anything 
at all. Only cared about my home, looked 
after it, and tried to make my family 
comfortable and happy." 



1 62 As Others See Her 

I bowed my head before her sublime 
humility. 

"My dear, it is because you have done 
*only that' that your abundant entrance is 
sure. If you had gone out to raise monuments 
of public service or tried to move multitudes 
and neglected that, you might have had some 
qualms. You've done the greatest thing a 
woman can do, and which none can do for 
her." 

Unconsciously my poor dying friend, as the 
living one had done, voiced the world's 
universal need. The wife of whom he spoke 
with such yearning as one who was "not 
above trying to make an ordinary chap 
happy" is the type we need and must have 
if humanity is to be saved. 

We need her in millions in every country. 
The foundations of home must be made 
unassailable so that they shall stand 
firm through sorrow and disillusion, aye, 
even through betrayal. It is the woman's 
part. 



As Others See Her 163 

It was the grey dawn before I fell asleep, 
and then my dreams were haunted by the 
bitter cry of the unwanted children of the 
world. 



XII 

THE politics of one country can never 
perhaps be fully understood by another. 
While certain general principles guide the 
political systems of all nations, yet each 
plays the game in its own way. 

I tried conscientiously to arrive at some 
correct grasp of the political situation, but 
found it an exhausting exercise. But I never 
lost interest, reading with avidity every- 
thing which would give more light, and ask- 
ing the usual questions. I asked more ques- 
tions in America than I have ever asked in 
the whole course of my life before, but it is 
on most occasions the only way of getting 
information. True, the information once 
acquired has to be sorted out continually, in 
the light of fresh information often from 
opposing sources. It is at least always a 
healthy exercise affecting the mind as gym- 
nastics affect the body. 

I found more acute and passionate party 



As Others See Her 165 

feeling than in my own country, but dis- 
tinctly less general interest In politics. The 
doings — and above all the talking — in Con- 
gress, except when something sensational is 
going on, are regarded by the average 
American with a very languid interest. There 
seems to be a more virulent brand of partisan- 
ship and people attach themselves to men 
rather than to affairs. 

Hence the personal element enters the 
public life of America in a way which we 
could never understand. Except in very 
rare and flagrant instances, in England a 
man's private life, as apart from his public 
one, is respected. Nobody pokes his nose into 
his private affairs in search of damning, or 
at least detrimental, facts. His past, dark or 
otherwise, interests few. It appears to be 
otherwise in America, if one is to believe all 
one reads, sees, and hears. 

It was in Washington I came into real 
touch with the political machine. We have 
not in any part of our Empire a city parallel 



i66 As Others See Her 

to Washington, and certainly not one so 
consistently dignified and beautiful as re- 
gards architecture and the disposition of its 
buildings. From the moment the traveller 
steps from the railroad track into the vast 
marble halls of Washington Station, he is 
impressed by the fact that the makers of 
the city had In view the sure day when 
America would become a great, perhaps the 
greatest, world-power. 

Whether that be so or not, all must admit 
that the Government seat is worthy of the 
country for which It stands. I saw it for the 
first time under the disadvantage of war 
conditions, which had suspended everything 
and covered the city in parts with the 
temporary departmental erections of which 
we had gotten our fill In London. But there 
were other advantages, and it certainly gave 
me an opportunity of seeing how a peace- 
loving republic addressed herself to the art 
of war. Her methods did not seem to differ 
from the accepted methods of other countries; 



As Others See Her 167 

certainly her war machine was just as cum- 
bersome, if not more so, than ours. 

One wandered bewildered through miles 
of temporary offices, busy hives where the 
click of the typewriting machine and the 
tread of hurrying feet never ceased. Suddenly 
a door would open, or through one slightly 
ajar, you would catch a glimpse of a hundred 
or two of earnest men who had been called 
to conference by their department to discuss 
the pregnant issues of the hour. 

The heads of all the war departments, 
with whom I had much converse, were strong, 
serious men, fully alive to the critical nature 
of the hour and the importance of the prob- 
lems with which they had to deal. I never 
could make up my mind whether the vast 
number of voluntary war workers in state 
departments at Washington were an asset 
or at times something of a liability. The 
diiference between the voluntary and the 
paid official is that you can't without much 
personal travail dismiss the volunteer for 



i68 As Others See Her 

inefficiency. In the conditions of his service 
he may be, and often is, a law to himself. 
It appeared to me that a far greater number 
of business men of assured position and 
proven ability had simply abandoned their 
private interests for the purpose of serving 
their country. 

It was a service loyal, splendid, and 
sincere. Mistakes were made, as is most 
inevitable when a great country embarks on 
an enterprise so stupendous and so full of 
unknown, unsuspected pitfalls. Again and 
again in America I was reminded of a pas- 
sage in one of Lloyd George's most effective 
speeches: — 

"What we have to remember is that for a 
peace-loving country war is, and must ever 
be, an undiscovered country, in great part a 
wilderness through which the straight path 
has to be cut. That there should be some 
side-tracking is inevitable, and the course 
may have to be changed with drastic rapidity 
any day." 



As Others See Her 169 

These pregnant words may well be applied 
to the conditions of war service In America. 
They are true of war service In every country 
in the world. 

The influx of thousands of new people to 
Washington rendered her housing problem 
so acute that the most extraordinary condi- 
tions prevailed. The number of strangers 
requiring accommodation was estimated at 
seventy thousand. What wonder, then, that 
two dollars and a half was charged, and paid, 
for permission to sleep on a billiard table, or 
sit up all night in a barber's chair? 

I was rescued by a hospitable friend from 
the Powhatan Hotel after sitting in the hall 
for seven or eight hours waiting for a room 
to be vacated that had been engaged for me 
days ahead. 

The social life of Washington was much 
affected by the war, but there was a good deal 
of quiet entertaining which afforded me on 
my different visits (I had to return to the 
city frequently to report and obtain further 



lyo As Others See Her 

instructions in my work) excellent opportu- 
nity of studying the types peculiar to the 
seat of a government. In London, which is 
so cosmopolitan, so honeycombed with every 
kind of interest and diversion, the political 
life of the nation does not stand out in such 
bold relief. In Washington everything has to 
do with Congress, whereas in London Parlia- 
ment is but a section of London life, intensely 
interesting to many, but a sealed book, 
regarding which they are indifferent, to a 
vast majority of the people. Perhaps, while 
the war was going on, public attention was 
more intimately and intensely focussed on 
the Houses of Parliament where the ques- 
tions of life and death so often hung in the 
balance, but in ordinary times it is as I j 
have said. 

I came to the conclusion that outside of 
the diplomatic circles women in the United 
States do not take much personal or active 
interest in politics. In England it is the secret 
ambition of many women to become the 



As Others See Her 171 

wife of a member of Parliament, because it 
at once gives her a certain social prestige, 
which, if she is an ambitious woman, she 
can easily follow up to her advantage. 

It did not seem to be so in America. I can 
never forget the impression of the narrow, 
prescribed life of the wives of Congressmen 
who live under the roof of Congress Hall, 
but who apparently have little commerce 
with the social circles in the city. I feel the 
need here and now of once more emphasizing 
the fact that these impressions are necessarily 
fleeting and partial, and in no sense final. 
But that is what I thought about the en- 
vironment of the Congress-ladies stranded 
in Washington. 

In London the political circle, if not the 
most brilliant, is certainly one of the most 
interesting and vivid that we have. Women 
take an intense practical and personal in- 
terest, not only in the constituency which 
has returned their husbands to the House,- 
but in everything connected with his political 



172 As Others See Her 

career. The day he makes a speech, even on 
the most trivial and unimportant subject, 
Is an epoch-making day. It may be, and in- 
deed often Is, the beginning of a great 
Parliamentary career. 

I seemed to miss that warm kind of per- 
sonal interest In the Congress-ladies at 
Washington, but perhaps I didn't have suffi- 
cient opportunity of judging correctly. 

Again and again, however, I was conscious 
of a singular detachment between the sexes, a 
distinct cleavage in their Interests, aims, and 
activities. American women are far more 
independent of men than we are. They don't 
take up hobbies just to kill time, or fill up 
with, because the man Is too busy, or doesn't 
come along. Their Interests and their hobbies, 
whether focussed on their club life or else- 
where, seem absorbing and sufficing. There 
can I think be no question about that. It 
interested me profoundly. Possibly it may 
make. If not for happiness, then for more 
peace In the long run, but It left me with a 



As Others See Her 173 

curious sense of the incompleteness of life. 
I missed everywhere the apparent comrade- 
ship in which so many husbands and wives 
walk together in my country. A man does 
not seem to go home and talk his business 
affairs over with his wife to the extent that 
It is done in England and in France. 

This detachment has no doubt arisen, in 
the first instance at least, from the American 
man's known chivalrous attitude towards 
women. He shelters her mightily, makes his 
utmost endeavour to keep away from her 
every chill and adverse wind. He suffers 
cheerfully, or the reverse, long periods of 
absence, which would cause the English 
husband to conclude that his better half 
was through with him; the most she knows 
about his business is the satisfying fact that 
it provides her with the necessary funds. 

This is all wrong. There cannot be a 
satisfactory partnership minus a sharing of 
burdens, and home life can be set on a sound 
basis only when all the cards are laid on the 



174 ^s Others See Her 

table and both partners know how they stand 
financially. 

There are, of course, women who are not 
worthy of such confidence, and who could 
not be trusted with the smallest business 
secret, but I am convinced that they are in 
the minority. Responsibility is surely the 
greatest factor in the development of charac- 
ter. The very knowledge that one is fully 
trusted at once creates a fine standard of 
honour. 

Again and again I missed the visible 
atmosphere of close comradeship between 
men and women in America, especially 
between husbands and wives, and I should 
like to know whether it is general, and what 
its thinkers feel about it. May it not have 
some bearing on the prevailing slackness of 
the marriage tie? Matrimony being at once 
the most exact, as well as the most exacting, 
science on earth, you have to put your whole 
resources of body, mind, and spirit into it 
to make it a success. 



As Others See Her 175 

And there has to be a mighty giving, 
especially on the part of the woman. That 
IS the law of life. When it is withheld, why 
then the little rift within the lute can 
quickly make the music mute. The way in 
which fools and babes rush headlong into 
the greatest undertaking of their lives must 
make the angels weep. 

The country seemed to me to be divided 
loosely into two great political factions, 
those for the President and those against 
him who were devoted lovers and followers of 
Theodore Roosevelt. Living sometimes in 
a Democratic house, sometimes in a Re- 
publican, I had opportunity of hearing both 
sides, but the political situation remained 
obscure to me to the end. 

The attachment to Roosevelt, however, 
appeared to be of a very intimate, passionate, 
and personal kind. Men admired Woodrow 
Wilson for his intellect, his far-sightedness, 
his dignity, and command of the English 



176 As Others See Her 

language, but stopped there. It was purely 
a matter of temperamental difference be- 
tween the two men, a difference obvious to 
the most casual observer. 

I had no opportunity for conversation 
with the President, but I carried away from 
my interview In New York with Mr. Roose- 
velt the Impression of a very vivid, compel- 
ling personality, from which flowed not 
only a torrent of speech and passion for the 
right, but an extraordinary sense of power 
and life. A born Inspirer and leader of men, 
with all the faults of his vivid personality, 
his death was an Irreparable loss to his 
country in her most critical hour. 

Surprised by the reluctance of some of her 
finest sons to enter the public life of America, 
I said one day to a very distinguished 
Pennsylvanian : — 

"Your place is not here at all just 
now, but at Washington. Why don't you 
and men like you go Into Congress or the 
Senate?" 



As Others See Her 177 

He shook his head. "Too much mud- 
sHnging; it's a thankless job." 

I could only point out that the best way 
to stop the mud-slInging and lift the political 
life of the country to a higher level was for 
men of high Ideal, with no end to serve but 
their country's good, to go Into power. But 
he continued to shake his head, and 
merely remarked that the millennium hadn't 
come. 

The feeling for Great Britain was very 
fine and warm on the occasion of my first 
visit to the States early In 19 18, but when I 
returned after the signing of the armistice 
there was a distinct fall in the barometer. 
There was a reaction, of which was born a 
coolness, a new, subtle hostility which one 
could sense everywhere. 

In all classes, but more especially among 
the splendid ranks of the war women who 
had thrown themselves so whole-heartedly 
into service, there was a keen disappoint- 
ment that the war had ended before the 



178 As Others See Her 

country had opportunity to prove her full 
strength and nobility of purpose. 

There was also in some quarters a great 
reaction against any further participation 
in European affairs. I found that feeling 
strong in many places. A typical example 
may be cited. One day travelling between 
Chicago and Cleveland, I had some con- 
versation with a business man in the dining- 
car over our evening meal. He was a typical 
Westerner, keen, vivid, rather picturesque 
In diction, and very charming. 

"We did our bit while we were in it, but 
we're glad to get through with it now," he 
said. "Yes, ma'm, it's over, and we don't 
want much more talk about it. What we 
want is to get back to the normal again. 
The war held up everything, and we've got 
to get busy now over our own domestic 
problems." 

"But you can still spare a little time, I 
hope, for world-problems ? " 

He shook a quite emphatic head. 



As Others See Her 179 

"No, ma'm; what has Europe ever done 
for us?" 

"Cradled you," I murmured. "And how- 
ever hard we try we never get quite away 
from the pull of the apron string." 

"Oh, that's mere sentiment. America for 
the Americans I say! That's the proper 
sentiment we want to cultivate now. We 
need all our strength and time for the 
development of our own resources, and the 
settling of our own private affairs." 

I leaned across the table and said 
quietly: 

"It sounds all right, my friend, but it 
just can't be done. You're in it now for all 
time. You've come out, put your hand to the 
plough, and you can't turn back. You're a 
world-power, perhaps destined to be the 
greatest of the future." 

"Oh, that's all right, ma'm; we don't 
doubt it, but we can become a world-power 
without getting messed up with European 
politics." 



i8o As Others See Her 

It was a curious, almost insular, view to 
which he held with singular tenacity. 

"But a world-power has got to deal with 
world-afFairs. It can't exist as a world-power 
otherwise. Then there's another proposition. 
Why do you suppose you have escaped the 
intimate horror of war, slept in peace and 
safety in your beds, without having your 
houses bombed and your cities laid waste? 
And you've lost only comparatively few of 
your splendid boys! You're not exhausted, 
your resources have hardly been tapped, and 
you've got to carry on and shoulder your 
full share now. We're tired over there, how 
tired I never knew till I came here and felt 
the pulse of your strength." 

His face was a study, but he took it well. 

"You can't keep back the rising tide, 
friend, nor yet retard the march of destiny. 
You've got the most glorious and wonderful 
country in the world. You've got to live up 
to it, and not be a race of pigmies." 

"I ain't got your tongue, ma'm! Have it 



As Others See Her i8i 

your own way! What I want is some im- 
mediate improvement in this railroad and 
better food on my plate at this moment — " 

We parted quite good friends, but I 
wondered often whether my blunt travelling 
acquaintance represented any considerable 
body of American opinion. I never heard 
any woman voice such sentiments. That is 
easily understood, however, because women 
have more imagination and considerably 
more vision than men. 

I left the country with an extraordinary 
sense of exhilaration tempered by anxiety^ 
The spirit of youth, everywhere the domi- 
nant note, gave to a spirit worn with the 
stress of life a singular uplift. But youth and 
abundance and success make a perilous 
combination which has been known to ship- 
wreck both men and nations. Therefore I 
pray that America will be guided in her 
counsels, her policy, and her destiny. 

That it will be a very great destiny, it 
needs no particular vision to discern. She is 



1 82 As Others See Her 

in a larger sense than she has yet grasped, 
the hope of the world. She needs all the 
wisdom, brains, and consecration of her finest 
sons and daughters. 

Never, even during the solemn stress of 
war, was the clarion call to service more 
insistent. May she hear to her uttermost 
borders, hear and obey! Thus and thus 
only, can she rise to the far heights, above 
and beyond the cherished dreams of those 
to whom she is most dear. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
V . S . A 



C 12 88 



'^-^.. 



